Home prices fall at record pace in May

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Prices of U.S. single-family homes plunged at a record pace in May from a year earlier, with each of the 20 regions monitored showing annual declines for a second month, according to the Standard & Poor's/Case Shiller home price indexes reported on Tuesday.

KEY POINTS:

* The S&P/Case Shiller composite index of 20 metropolitan areas fell 0.9 percent in May from April, bringing the measure down 15.8 percent from May 2007.

* Economists surveyed by Thomson Reuters expected the monthly and annual drops would be 1 percent and 16 percent, respectively.

* S&P said the composite index of 10 metropolitan areas declined 1 percent in May, for a 16.9 percent year-over-year drop.

COMMENTS:

MICHELLE MEYER, ECONOMIST, LEHMAN BROTHERS, NEW YORK:

"The data came in better than we were expecting and better than the market was expecting. The increase in 7 of the cities was encouraging, but we are not going to get too excited about the data yet as it is not seasonally adjusted and prices tend to be higher during the spring selling season. We will see how this plays out in the coming months."

PIERRE ELLIS, SENIOR ECONOMIST, DECISION ECONOMICS, NEW YORK:

"The first thing is that the degree to which it gets worse compared to last month is smaller than it was the month before and the month before that. The rate of decline is not accelerating as fast. You also see increasingly stark differences across markets which suggests that the supply/demand imbalance is less severe in some places than in others. There is some light very very far down the tunnel as far as the stabilization of the national housing market. Some markets still have major declines yet to go, but the good news is that others might not. The markets that still have major declines ahead are the 'poster children' like Florida and Phoenix where great amounts of building took place and yet prices got very high."

BRIAN DOLAN, CHIEF CURRENCY STRATEGIST, FOREX.COM, BEDMINSTER,

NEW JERSEY: