National Home Prices Re-accelerated | South Salem Real Estate

S&P Dow Jones Indices released the Case-Shiller (CS) National Home Price Index for July. The index rose at a seasonally adjusted annual growth rate of 5.0%, faster than the 2.1% in June. House prices have decelerated since the beginning of 2016 due to the sharp decline in existing home sales at the end of 2015. But, home prices started to accelerate in May and home price appreciation increased to 5.0% in July.

The Home Price Index from the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) rose at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.8% in July, following 3.4% in June, confirming the reacceleration in home prices.

However, local housing markets varied greatly. Figure 2 shows home price appreciation for 20 major U.S. metropolitan areas in July.

Twelve out of the 20 metro areas had positive home price appreciation. The highest one in the list was Portland, OR with an annual rate of 8.2%, followed by Denver with an annual rate of 6.6%. Phoenix placed third with an annual rate of 5.9%.

Home price appreciation in the remaining eight metro areas was negative. They are San Francisco, Washington, DC, Atlanta, Chicago, Boston, Detroit, Minneapolis, and New York. Home price appreciation in Chicago was -5.9%, the lowest among 20 metro areas.