San Diego home prices jumped again, Case-Shiller says

Prices in Palm Beach, Broward and Miami-Dade counties rose 7.4 percent in August compared to August 2014, figures from the Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller index show.

Today’s release of the Case Shiller Chicago home price index for August once again shows Chicago pretty much in last place among 20 metro areas in terms of price appreciation.

Home values in the New York metropolitan area continue to climb out of a deep downturn, but at a slower rate than the nation as a whole, the S&P/Case-Shiller home price indexes reported Tuesday.

On a month-over-month basis, the index rose 0.3 percent in August prior to seasonal adjustment.

That growth puts South Florida in sixth place for increasing prices, with Denver and San Francisco leading the country at 10.7 percent year-over-year. Estimates in the Bloomberg survey ranged from gains of 4.7 percent to 5.7 percent.

Portland’s rather sudden major increase may explain a few residents’ resentment; earlier this year they started slapping “No Californians” stickers on for sale signs, attributing the price hike to those priced-out would-be homebuyers from that state.

Month over month, the index’s 10-city and 20-city composites reported gains of 0.3% and 0.4%, respectively. More recent indicators of the health of the housing market largely have been strong, with a few notable weak spots.

“We are seeing home prices continue to increase, but not at the breakneck pace that they had been increasing before”, said Danielle Hale, an NAR analyst. Sales of existing homes are running about 5.5 million units annually with inventories of about five months of sales. He noted, however, that sales of new home-sales dropped off sharply against expectations in September. “One result is that a 5 percent price increase in the value of a house means more today than it did in 2005-2006, the peak of the housing boom when the inflation rate was higher”. Even excluding food and energy, the core inflation was 1.9 percent.

Quicken Loans vice president Bill Banfield: The small pool of available homes on the market has continued to push prices higher.