S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index: May Update

With today's release of the May S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, we learned that seasonally adjusted home prices for the benchmark 20-city index were up 0.04% month over month which is cut to -0.22% with inflation adjustment.

Investing.com had forecast a 0.3% MoM seasonally adjusted increase and 4.0% YoY nonseasonally adjusted for the 20-city series.

Here is the analysis from today's Standard & Poor's press release:

"May's housing price data were stable," says Craig J. Lazzara, Managing Director and Global Head of Index Investment Strategy at S&P Dow Jones Indices. "The National Composite Index rose by 4.5% in May 2020, with comparable growth in the 10- and 20-City Composites (up 3.1% and 3.7%, respectively). In contrast with the past eight months, May's gains were less than April’s. Although prices increased in May, in other words, they did so at a decelerating rate. We observed an analogous development at the city level: prices increased in all 19 cities for which we have data, but accelerated in only 3 of them (in contrast with 12 cities last month and 18 the month before that).

"More data will obviously be required in order to know whether May’s report represents a reversal of the previous path of accelerating prices or merely a slight deviation from an otherwise intact trend. Even if prices continue to decelerate, that is quite different from an environment in which prices actually decline.

"Among the cities, Phoenix retains the top spot for the 12th consecutive month, with a gain of 9.0% for May. Home prices in Seattle rose by 6.8%, followed by Tampa at 6.0%. As has been the case for the last several months, prices were particularly strong in the West and Southeast, and comparatively weak in the Northeast." [Read more]

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.