Case-Shiller: Simultaneous Summer Surge Stretches On

It’s time for our monthly check-in of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (HPI). For the full source data behind this post, plus seasonally adjusted and tiered price data, hit the S&P/Case-Shiller website. 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. – July data is released in September).

Here are the basic Case-Shiller stats for the Boston area* as of July:

Seventeen of the twenty metro areas tracked by Case-Shiller saw an increase in their respective seasonally-adjusted HPIs between June and July. Only Las Vegas, Seattle, and Detroit continued to mark seasonally-adjusted drops month-to-month.

Here in Boston, a summer bump in home prices has been part of the routine all the way down since the peak in late 2005. However, this year’s summer spike is much sharper, and would seem to be the result of external forces rather than the natural movement of the market.

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.

I suppose this summer could be called the summer of the sudden surge or the summer of the massive desperate government intervention. Either way, the result has been increasing prices in most markets over the past few months. Potentially good news if you’re trying to sell your house, but not especially encouraging if you’re hoping to buy, but prices had not yet come down quite into your reasonable range yet. Whether the $8,000 first-time homebuyer tax credit expires or not, I think this winter will be interesting.

Here’s the flip side of the peak decline chart, the Great Summer Bounce of Aught-Nine:

It’s the best recovery that $700 billion plus $787 billion can buy!

*[Case-Shiller defines Boston as the entire Boston-Cambridge-Quincy, MA-NH Metropolitan Statistical Area, which includes all or part of the following counties: Essex MA, Middlesex MA, Norfolk MA, Plymouth MA, Suffolk MA, Rockingham NH, and Strafford NH.]