CoreLogic, a California-based business analysis service, has released its December Home Price Index. The data show a drop in the price of homes across the country, in Washington and in the Tacoma area. in 2011

Where home prices nationwide were down 4.7 percent at the end of December compared to prices in December, 2010, home prices in the Tacoma area were down 10.2 percent.

November figures showed prices had fallen 10.9 percent in the Tacoma area, the company said in a release Thursday.

Statewide, prices were down 5.3 percent fir December – placing the state between Delaware and New Mexico. …

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Here’s the good news for home sales in the Puget Sound area last year: The number of sales completed last year rose by more than 7 percent.

Now, the bad news if you were a seller: The median prices, propelled by short sales and transactions of distressed homes owned by banks, fell by more than 9.8 percent in that same period.

New figures from the Northwest Multiple Listing Service show home sales numbers were up 12.67 percent in Pierce County and 9.07 percent in King County.

But the average price in those two counties dropped significantly, the NWMLS said. …

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Looks like 2012 will be the Year of Meh.

According to an economic forecast presented this morning at the annual Horizons Breakfast, Pierce County’s economy will grow for the second year in a row. But it won’t feel good.

People still will have trouble finding a job. Business profits will stagnate. The housing market will continue to hurt.

This is what healing feels like after a such a wounding Recession. (I’m taking a liberty here and capitalizing it, since we capitalize the Great Depression.)

Soon-to-be former state economist Arun Raha, one of the keynote speakers, said this year’s income …

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In Washington state’s foreclosure rankings, Pierce County is No. 2, according to new data for the month of November.

Foreclosure firm RealtyTrac released its monthly report on the U.S. foreclosure market today, including how many homes have received some sort of foreclosure notice in the last month and the average sale price of a foreclosed home.

At No. 23, Washington itself is in the middle of the national pack. The top states with the worst foreclosure rates continue to be the ones at the epicenter of the housing bubble: Nevada, California and Arizona are the top 3.

In Pierce …

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Home sale prices in Pierce County fell again in November compared to the same time last year, continuing a year-over-year decline seen every month of 2011.

Monthly data from the Northwest Multiple Listings Service released Monday showed single family homes and condos in Pierce had a median sale price of $184,848 last month, an 11 percent decline from the same month a year ago. At the median sale price, half the homes sold for more than that amount and half sold for less.

Distressed properties are to blame for the falling prices, brokers said, because they sell at a discount. …

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Federal Way’s Weyerhaeuser Co., which reported declining earnings for the third quarter today, says the market for its timber and wood products is weak at home and softening overseas even in such relatively robust markets as China.

The company predicted lower earnings in the fourth quarter as the price of logs declines and the costs of operating escalates during the fall and early winter because of deteriorating weather.

The forest products company reported earning of $66 million or 12 cents a share excluding special items. That compares with $81 million in the third quarter of last year on the same …

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The fraud trial of a former Pierce Commercial Bank senior vice president and three co-defendants has been delayed until next May.

The case against Shawn L. Portmann, Sonja L. Lightfoot, Jeanette R. Salsi and Adam S. Voelker in U.S. District court will begin May 15 instead of this month as originally set.

Defense lawyers asked for the trial delay because of the case’s complexity and the needed to study the voluminous documents involved in the case. Government prosecutors did not object to the delay.

The federal government accused Portmann and the co-defendants of submitting false document regarding borrowers’ qualifications and …

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The developers of a stillborn housing project once planned for the parking lot across Market Street from the Tacoma Municipal Building were named defendants this week in a suit brought by the Tacoma Community Redevelopment Authority.

That project, Artlofts on Market, was conceived by Catapult Development Partners as a mixed use, retail, and parking project topped with loft housing units. The authority lent the partners in that project, Michael and Mary Ann Trower, Monica Smith Alliergro and her husband and Mark and Mollie Huppert, $670,625 in Oct. 27, 2005 to buy the parking lot.

When the development wasn’t built, the …

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