Dean Foust
This development has gotten very little ink (in fact the only publicly accessible story I could turn up on it was this one from last June) but the Chicago Mercantile Exchange quietly began trading futures contracts on home resale values last May. The contracts are based on the Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller Metro Area House Price indexes, which track price changes of existing homes in 10 major metro markets. I’m no financial planner, but sounds like it would be perfect for an individual who, thanks to the bubble, has too much of their wealth tied up in housing, or an individual who bought it at the peak of the market and is now terrified that a downturn could leave them upside down.
Not sure that futures are for the small investor, but you could imagine that this could lead the financial wizards of Wall Street to start creating Exchange Traded Funds based on the Case-Shiller index. Of course that could take a couple more years and might end up being too late for homeowners who ride the market back down again.
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