Case-Shiller: DC and National Home Prices Increase

• October 25th 2011

by UrbanTurf Staff

The latest Case-Shiller report released this morning showed that national home prices rose ever so slightly between July and August 2011, but that prices dropped 3.8 percent across the country since August of last year.

In what has become a certified trend over the past several months, the index reported that home prices in the DC area increased on both a monthly (+1.6%) and annual (+0.3%) basis. In another trend that seems to be constant, DC and Detroit were the only two cities in the 20-city index that showed year-over-year home price increases.

The area price increases between July and August were most noticeable in the low tier (homes under $293,756) and the middle tier (homes between $293,756 and $457,827). Prices for homes in the high tier (homes priced above $457,827) actually dropped slightly.

From David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Indices:

“In the August data, the good news is continued improvement in the annual rates of change in home prices. In spring and summer’s seasonally strong period for housing demand, we cautioned that monthly increases in prices had to be paired with improvement in annual rates before anyone could declare that the market might be stabilizing. With 16 of 20 cities and both Composites seeing their annual rates of change improve in August, we see a modest glimmer of hope with these data.”

When considering the Case-Shiller findings, recall that the index is based on closed sales and home price data from 5 to 7 months ago. Another thing that is important to note is that the main index only covers single-family home prices, so co-op and condo prices are not included in the analysis that is widely reported. Chicago and New York City are two of the cities where Case-Shiller provides a separate index for condo prices, but DC does not have a similar index.

This article originally published at https://dc.urbanturf.com/articles/blog/case-shiller_dc_and_national_home_prices_increase/4436.