Monthly Home-Price Growth Is Slowing Down—Annual Rates Are Not
Home price growth slowed for the month of August, though year-over-year rates are still at an all-time high, Realtor.com reports.
Monthly gains may be decelerating, but consistent demand pressures continue to drive up prices for homebuyers, particularly with a new construction deficit leaving few options on the market.
The latest edition of the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index showed that home prices increased nationally 19.8% from a year ago in August, roughly in line with the previous month’s increase. The separate 20-city index, which measures price appreciation among a group of major metropolitan areas across the country, notched a 19.7% year-over-year gain, down from a revised 20% annual gain the month before.
“Annual house price gains remained extremely high in August but the pace of month-over-month gains continues to decelerate,” Lynn Fisher, the deputy director of the division of research and statistics at the FHFA, said in the report. “This does not mean house prices are at risk of declining—far from it, they continue to climb at a double-digit pace in all regions—but it does suggest we may have seen the peak in annual gains for the time being.”