S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index: Home Prices Continue to Slow

With today's release of the August S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, we learned that seasonally adjusted home prices for the benchmark 20-city index were down 0.16% month over month which is cut to -0.4% with inflation adjustment. The seasonally adjusted national index year-over-year change has hovered between 4.2% and 6.7% for the last two-plus years. Today's S&P/Case-Shiller National Home Price Index (nominal) reached another new high.

The adjacent column chart illustrates the month-over-month change in the seasonally adjusted 20-city index, which tends to be the most closely watched of the Case-Shiller series. It was up 0.02% from the previous month. The nonseasonally adjusted index was up 2.1% year-over-year.

Investing.com had forecast a 0.1% MoM seasonally adjusted increase and 2.1% YoY nonseasonally adjusted for the 20-city series.

Here is an excerpt from the analysis in today's Standard & Poor's press release.

“The U.S. National Home Price NSA Index trend remained intact with a year-over-year price change of 3.2%” says Philip Murphy, Managing Director and Global Head of Index Governance at S&P Dow Jones Indices. “However, a shift in regional leadership may be underway beneath the headline national index.

“Phoenix saw an increase in its YOY price change to 6.3% and retained its leading position. However, Las Vegas dropped from number two to number eight among the cities of the 20-City Composite, falling from a 4.7% YOY change in July to only 3.3% in August. Meanwhile, the Southeast region included three of the top four cities. Charlotte, Tampa, and Atlanta all recorded solid YOY performance with price changes of 4.5%, 4.3%, and 4.0%, respectively. In the Northwest, Seattle’s YOY change turned positive (0.7%) after three consecutive months of negative YOY price changes. The 10-City Composite YOY price change declined slightly from July to 1.5%, while the 20-City Composite YOY price change remained steady at 2.0%. San Francisco was the only city to record a negative YOY price change (-0.1%).” [Link to source]

The chart below is an overlay of the Case-Shiller 10- and 20-City Composite Indexes along with the national index since 1987, the first year that the 10-City Composite was tracked. Note that the 20-City, which is probably the most closely watched of the three, dates from 2000. We've used the seasonally adjusted data for this illustration.

The next chart shows the year-over-year Case-Shiller series, again using the seasonally adjusted data.

 

Here is the same year-over-year overlay adjusted for inflation with the Consumer Price Index owners' equivalent rent of residences.

 

For a long-term perspective on home prices, here is a look at the seasonally and inflation-adjusted Case-Shiller price index from 1953, the first year that monthly data is available. Because the CPI owners' equivalent rent of residences didn't start until 1983, we've used the broader seasonally adjusted Consumer Price Index.

 

To get an even better idea of the trend in housing prices over long time periods, we compare the change in the seasonally-adjusted Case-Shiller Home Price Index and the Consumer Price Index since 1953.