BAM Key Details:
- Home price indices from Case-Shiller and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) show a notable difference in their year-over-year changes in home values.
- Robert Shiller makes a prediction on home price trends that takes recent price adjustments and current mortgage rates into account.
This week on the Hot Sheet, Byron Lazine broke down the latest housing index reports from Case-Shiller and the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), along with Robert Shiler’s latest prediction on the housing market.
Per the latest report from the S&P Dow Jones Indices (S&P DJI), showing data for May 2023, all 20 major U.S. metros reported month-over-month gains in home prices for the third consecutive month.
On an annual basis, the difference between Case-Shiller’s report and that of the FHFA is more striking. And, taking the latest trends in home prices and mortgage rates into account, Yale economist Robert Shiller has an idea of what we can expect with home prices over the coming months.
The Case-Shiller Index Shows 4th Consecutive Monthly Increase in Home Prices
The U.S. National Index posted a non-seasonally adjusted 1.2% monthly increase in May, while the 10-City and 20-City Composites both registered monthly increases of 1.5%.
Seasonally adjusted month-over-month increases were 0.7% for the National Index, 1.1% for the 10-City Composite, and 1.0% for the 20-City Composite.
Source: Fortune/Lance Lambert
The ongoing recovery in home prices is broadly based. Before seasonal adjustment, prices rose in all 20 cities in May (as they had also done in March and April). Seasonally adjusted data showed rising prices in 19 cities in May, repeating April’s performance. (The outlier is Phoenix, down 0.1% in both months.) On a trailing 12-month basis, the National Composite is 0.5% below its May 2022 level, with the 10- and 20-City Composites also negative on a year-over-year basis.
Year over year, home prices are down 0.5%
Case-Shiller reported the following year-over-year home price adjustments for May 2023:
- U.S. National Home Price NSA Index (for all nine U.S. census divisions): -0.5%, which is down from the previous month’s -0.1%
- 10-City Composite: -1.0%, slightly up from the previous month’s -1.1%
- 20-City Composite: -1.7%, same as the month before (April 2023)
Chicago, Cleveland, and New York had the highest year-over-year increases in home values:
- Chicago (+4.6%)
- Cleveland (+3.9%)
- New York (+3.5%)
Regional differences continue to be striking. This month’s league table shows the Revenge of the Rust Belt, as Chicago (+4.6%), Cleveland (+3.9%), and New York (+3.5%) were the top performers. If this seems like an unusual occurrence to you, it seems that way to me too. It’s been five years to the month since a cold-weather city held the top spot (and that was Seattle, which isn’t all that cold). Since May 2018, the top-ranked cities have been Las Vegas (12 months), Phoenix (33 months), Tampa (5 months), and Miami (9 months).
At the other end of the scale, the worst performers continue to cluster near the Pacific coast, with Seattle (-11.3%) and San Francisco (-11.0%) at the bottom. This month the Midwest (+2.7%) unseated the Southeast (+2.1%) as the country’s strongest region. The West (-6.9%) remains weakest.
Robert Shiller prediction
While Robert Shiller is known for having predicted, in 2007, that housing prices would crash (which they did), he’s not predicting either a boom or a bust for the months ahead.
Last week on CNBC, he suggested home prices would go neither up nor down but sideways for the time being.
The housing market is different than the stock market, it’s normally forecastable. It has been growing since 2012, it has been about 10 years of steady growth in home prices. But it may be coming to an end with this interest rate rising cycle.
In August 2022, Shiller suggested home prices could fall by a little over 10% by 2024 or 2025. But while prices, as reported by Case-Shiller, did fall 5.1% between June 2022 and January 2023, they’ve since rebounded through April by 2.8%.
Part of what’s happening in the increase in home prices is just seasonal, it’s the summer and it’s typically going up in the summer.
If he’s right, we could be looking at month-over-month declines in home prices later in the year as we enter the slower fall and winter months. Either way, Shiller doesn’t see cause for alarm.
We’ll see whether we get a soft landing [of the U.S. economy]. But it’s a possibility. I’m not panicking one way or another.
If he’s right, we could be looking at month-over-month declines in home prices later in the year as we enter the slower fall and winter months. Either way, Shiller doesn’t see cause for alarm.
The FHFA Index
Apparently, the FHFA does home price research a little differently because, according to its index for May 2023, home prices went up 2.8% year over year—compared to Case-Shiller’s annual -0.5% drop.
FHFA also reported a 0.7% increase in home prices from the previous month.
For the nine U.S. census divisions, seasonally adjusted home price changes from April to May 2023 ranged from -0.5% in the New England division to +1.7% in the Pacific division.
Year-over-year changes ranged from -2.7% in the Mountain division to +5.5% in the East North Central division.
U.S. house prices increased moderately in May, continuing the trend of the last few months. However, house prices in some regions of the country remained below the levels seen one year ago.
Takeaways for real estate agents
Putting aside the difference in annual home price indices, your knowledge of recent changes and trends in home values—national, regional, and local—enables you to put alarmist headlines in perspective and help your clients and community make sense of what’s really happening.
This is where it helps if you know someone who is brilliant at taking all the latest information on the housing market, assessing it within its proper context, making connections with other sources and insights, and delivering it all in a clear, engaging, and shareable package.
So, if you’re not already watching the Hot Sheet every weekday and the Knowledge Broker Podcast every Friday, consider tuning in. And join the BAMx community to participate in webinars and get your questions answered in real-time (along with access to courses, exclusive content and a private Facebook group).
