Chicago-area home prices rose 0.7 percent in August from July, besting the nation’s 0.3 percent increase, according to the widely watched index, released Tuesday.
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San Francisco and Denver had the highest gains among the 20 cities with price increases of 10.7 percent, Case-Shiller reported.
“A notable part of today’s economy is the continuing low inflation rate; in the year to September, consumer prices were unchanged”, says David M. Blitzer, Managing Director and Chairman of the Index Committee for S&P Dow Jones Indices. The 20-city index gained 5.1% year-over-year compared with 4.9% a month earlier.
On a monthly basis, both the National Index and 10-City Composite reported gains of 0.3 percent, while the 20-City Composite posted a month-over-month gain of 0.4 percent.
Eighteen of 20 cities across the country reported increases in prices month-over-month before seasonal adjustment. According to the Census, 63.7 percent of people owned their homes, up from 63.4 percent in the second quarter.
Home prices have risen at a 5 per cent pace for most of this year, which economists see as more sustainable than last year’s double-digit gains. New York’s 1.8 percent was the lowest. “Even excluding food and energy, core inflation was 1.9 percent”.
The housing data for recent months have shown a trend of general improvement, with homebuilder confidence rising alongside a faster pace of new-home construction, and sales of previously owned homes rebounding to the second-highest level since February 2007.
Compared with their peak in the summer of 2006, home prices on both 10-city and 20-city indexes remain down about 11% to 13%.
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Blitzer also said that price growth in the range of 4-to-5 percent has come during a period of low inflation, which means that the appreciation is greater in real terms than it was during the bubble years when inflation was higher.
