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The numbers: Home prices in the 20 biggest U.S. metropolitan areas lost more steam in September, buckling under the pressure of high mortgage rates and historic unaffordability.
The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-city house-price index rose 0.2% in September, compared with the previous month.
Home prices in the 20 major U.S. metropolitan markets were up 4.6% in the 12 months ending in September.
That’s a deceleration compared with an increase of 5.2% the previous month. Economists surveyed by Dow Jones Newswires and the Wall Street Journal expected the 20-city index to increase by 4.8%.
A broader measure of home prices, the national index, rose 0.3% in September and was up 3.9% over the past year. All numbers are seasonally adjusted.
Home prices posted the slowest gain since September 2023.
Even though prices are growing less rapidly, the 20-city and national indexes still inched to new record highs in September.
Key details: Prior to making adjustments for seasonality, the index showed a drop in home prices.
The 20-city index fell 0.3% in September as compared with the month before, and the national index fell 0.1%.
Drilling down on the cities, New York posted the biggest year-over-year home-price gains in September. Prices were up 7.5%.
Home prices grew most slowly in Denver, by 0.2%.
| City | Change from last year |
| Atlanta | 3.3% |
| Boston | 4.4% |
| Charlotte, N.C. | 4.6% |
| Chicago | 6.9% |
| Cleveland | 7.1% |
| Dallas | 1.1% |
| Denver | 0.2% |
| Detroit | 5.3% |
| Las Vegas | 6.7% |
| Los Angeles | 4.6% |
| Miami | 3.9% |
| Minneapolis | 2.3% |
| New York | 7.5% |
| Phoenix | 1.8% |
| Portland | 1% |
| San Diego | 4.7% |
| San Francisco | 1.9% |
| Seattle | 5.1% |
| Tampa | 1% |
| Washington, D.C. | 5.3% |
| Composite-20 | 4.6% |
A separate report from the Federal Housing Finance Agency showed home prices were up by 0.7% in September when compared with the previous month, and up 4.4% in the past year.
Home-price growth slowed in the third quarter of 2024, the agency said. “While house prices continued to increase because housing demand outpaced the locked-in housing supply, elevated house prices and mortgage rates likely contributed to the slowdown in price growth,” the FHFA’s Anju Vajja said in a statement.
The median price of a resale home was $406,700 in September, and the median price of a newly built home was $426,300.
Big picture: The housing market is feeling the effects of high mortgage rates and record-high home prices.
Home buyers are shying away from the housing market, causing prices to grow at a slower pace.
Prices could lose more momentum in the coming months. The 30-year mortgage rate was largely below 7% for July, August and September, a period covered by the most recent the Case-Shiller index, but rose sharply after the presidential election in early November.
What S&P said: “Home price growth stalled in the third quarter, after a steady start to 2024,” Brian D. Luke, head of commodities, real estate and digital assets at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said in a statement.
The strongest price growth was seen in the Northeast and Midwest, he added, led by New York, Cleveland and Chicago.
What are they saying? “Traditionally, the has shown an increase in home price growth between August and September. This year, the September data could be indicative of a slowdown in home price appreciation in the months ahead,” Lisa Sturtevant, chief economist at Bright MLS, said in a statement.