U.S. housing prices index (20-City Composite) is expected to increase by more than 14% YoY in April. On June 29th, the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Indexes* will be released. As a reminder, they are calculated monthly using a three-month moving average and are published with a two-month lag at 9 am EST on the last Tuesday of every month.
Other indexes already pointed to an acceleration in April. As a matter of fact, the CoreLogic House Price Index jumped by 13.0% YoY (up from 11.3% YoY in March). It was the third consecutive month of double digit gains and the highest rate of annual appreciation since February 2006. In addition, the short-term momentum has been strong with a 2.1% MoM increase from March to April.
Over the same period, the NAR highlighted that “The median existing-home price for all housing types in April was $341,600, up 19.1% from April 2020 ($286,800), as every region recorded price increases. This is a record high and marks 110 straight months of year-over-year gains.” As I already noted, this phenomenom can be partly explained by the collapse in inventory.
Latest reports confirmed that housing prices kept climbing at a fast rate in May. As a result, the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller (20-City Composite) is likely to rise by more than 15% YoY in May. This week, the NAR highlighted that “The median existing-home price for all housing types in May was $350,300, up 23.6% from May 2020 ($283,500), as every region registered price increases. This is a record high and marks 111 straight months of year-over-year gains since March 2012.“
Other reports confirmed that housing prices growth accelerated in May. Redfin reported “The national median home-sale price hit a record high of $377,200, up a record 26% year over year.” Lastly, “The typical U.S. home grew in value by 13.2% year-over-year in May, and was up 1.7% from April, to $287,148 — both record highs in Zillow data that dates to 1996.” Most importantly, the YoY acceleration is mainly due to record short-term appreciation of the past few months as illustrated by the chart below. In this context, Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist noted that “falling affordability is simply squeezing some first-time buyers out of the market.“
*More than 27 years of history are available for these data series, and are available here.