Rex Nutting at Dow Jones reports:

“Home values in 20 major U.S. cities fell at the fastest rate on record in January and are now down a record 19% in the 12 months ending in January.

The Case-Shiller index tracks repeat sales on the same properties over time, but it closely tracks only 20 cities, not the whole country.

A similar index from the Federal Housing Finance Agency released last week found prices rose 1.7% in January, the first increase in a year. The FHFA index tracks the whole country, but relies on data from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, so it missed most of purchases financed by subprime loans earlier in the decade.”

It’s beginning to be clear that we can have much less faith in the government’s data releases.