NEW YORK CITY-The latest data released Tuesday from Standard & Poor's Case-Shiller US National Home Price Index show that single-family home price indices declined by 4.2% in the first quarter of 2011, after falling another 3.6% in Q4 of 2010. But the residential market hasn’t hit rock bottom, says David Blitzer, managing director and chairman of the Index Committee at S&P, which he says may have an impact on the commercial real estate market as well.

“My impression is commercial markets peaked after the residential market did, to some extent,” Blitzer tells GlobeSt.com. “At this point, in today’s report, we say the residential market hasn’t bottomed yet. In fact, it demonstrated that it did not bottom-out two years ago. If that were to follow through, one would expect the commercial market to continue to drift down.”

In Q1, which includes data up to March 2011, the National Index hit a new recession low, posting an annual decline of 5.1% versus Q1 of 2010, according to a statement from S&P. Across America, home prices are back to mid-2002 levels, but S&P also finds that an increasing number of markets are posting new lows, such as New York, Atlanta, Chicago, Miami among eight others.