Meanwhile, back on Main Street...

House prices are still falling! OFHEO is out with its latest numbers: Home values declined by 0.6% from June to July, and are down 5.3% from a year ago. For the month, prices fell in each of the nine Census divisions OFHEO tracks. That's a change from prior months, in which home prices continued to appreciate in certain pockets, like the one that includes Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas and Louisiana. The drop isn't the worst we've seen, though. From March to April, home prices nationally dropped by 0.8%.

Just as a reminder, OFHEO uses mortgage data from Fannie and Freddie and doesn't include subprime or jumbo loans, which is one reason it winds up with different results than the Case-Shiller index, which follows 20 large cities.

The "good" news? As long as you bought your house before October 2005, you're still in the black:

Barbara!