With today's release of the December S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, we learned that seasonally adjusted home prices for the benchmark 20-city index saw a 1.25% increase month over month which is cut to 1.1% with inflation adjustment. The non-seasonally adjusted national index saw a 10.4% YoY increase.

Investing.com had forecast a 1.3% MoM seasonally adjusted increase and 9.9% YoY nonseasonally adjusted for the 20-city series.

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

NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 23, 2021: S&P Dow Jones Indices (S&P DJI) today releases the latest results for the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices, the leading measure of U.S. home prices. Data released today for December 2020 show that home prices continue to increase across the U.S. More than 27 years of history are available for the data series, and can be accessed in full by going to https://www.spglobal.com/spdji/.

Please note that transaction records for October 2020 and November 2020 for Wayne County, MI, are now available. Due to delays at the local recording office caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, S&P DJI and CoreLogic were previously unable to generate valid October 2020 and November 2020 updates for the Detroit S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices.

However, there are still an insufficient number of records from Wayne County for December 2020. Since Wayne County is the most populous county in the Detroit metro area, S&P DJI and CoreLogic are unable to generate a valid Detroit index value for December 2020. When the sale transactions data fully resumes, and sufficient data is collected, the Detroit index values for the month(s) with missing updates will be calculated. [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.

This next chart shows the real-inflation adjusted indexes using the CPI owner's equivalent rent of residences.

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, which is why this looks different from the real inflation-adjusted indexes two charts above.

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.