It’s time for our monthly check-in of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (HPI). Keep in mind that all of the charts in this series of posts are based on the seasonally-adjusted data provided by S&P. For the full source data behind this post, plus non-seasonally adjusted data, hit the S&P/Case-Shiller website (requires free registration). For an explanation of how the Case-Shiller data is calculated, check out their methodology pdf. Also remember that the data released on the last Tuesday of a given month is for the period two months prior (i.e. – January data is released in March).
Here are the basic Case-Shiller stats for the Los Angeles area (which Case-Shiller defines as LA and Orange Counties) as of January:
Month to Month: Up 0.9% (raw)
Month to Month: Up 1.8% (seasonally adjusted)
Year to Year: Up 3.9%
Prices last at this level in: November 2003 (and Dec.08)
Peak month: September 2006
Change from Peak: Down 36.9% in 40 months
Twelve of the twenty metro areas tracked by Case-Shiller saw an increase in their respective seasonally-adjusted HPIs between December and January (down from fourteen in November and December). Miami, Charlotte, New York, Dallas, Portland, Atlanta, Seattle, and Chicago all marked seasonally-adjusted drops month-to-month.
Here’s a look at LA’s latest tiered data, back through 2000:
All three of LA’s home price tiers got a pretty solid boost in January, with the low tier rising 1.8%, the middle tier bumping up 0.9%, and the high tier gaining 1.7%. With all three tiers rising at a rate in excess of 10% YOY, this screams “unsustainable” to me. It seems likely that this may just be a bounceback from a slight panic-driven overcorrection.
Here’s a chart of Case-Shiller HPIs for all the markets that Redfin serves:
Here’s our peak decline chart, in which we line up the peak Case-Shiller HPI value for each of Redfin’s markets, so we can see how long each market has been declining, and how much it has dropped from the peak.
Here’s the flip side of the peak decline chart—a graph since January 2009, indexed to January 2009 = 100%:
Prices in the three California cities and Phoenix have all been pretty steadily increasing since last spring, but elsewhere the price rebound has been less convincing. Despite showing some stability through 2009, Seattle and New York both hit new post-peak lows in January.
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