Case Shiller Home Prices: Nearly Flat Again

September 24, 2019
Bottom Line: Home prices barely moved higher again in July. Nationwide price gains have continued to slow with several large markets (New York and LA) seeing falling prices. Most cities continue to city modest year-on-year gains with the Phoenix and Vegas metro areas still leading gains, up 6+%, compared to just 2% nationally. Overall, the trend is towards very slow house price appreciation nationwide as higher priced markets settle into a new equilibrium after a sharp adjustment to tax changes in early 2018. Case Shiller 20-City Home Price Index ROSE by 0.02% (seasonally adjusted) in July to 216.1, compared with market expectations for an increase of 0.1%. Home prices are 2.0% ABOVE their year ago level. Nationwide home prices are now just 4.6% ABOVE their April 2006 peak, near late 2005 levels and 58.0% ABOVE their January 2012 trough. On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, the home price index ROSE by 0.1% on the month. Housing prices rose in 17 of the 20 metro areas in July (on a seasonally adjusted basis) and in 19 of 20 metro areas on a year-over-year basis. Seattle had the smallest year-over-year increase at 0.8% while Phoenix had the largest year-over-year increase at 6.3%.