It will be the end of May before the Case-Shiller numbers for March are released and the March numbers will really be the January-March average numbers. It will be a while before Case-Shiller numbers reflect the impact of the Coronavirus.
Phoenix was still the hottest metro covered by Case-Shiller in January 2020. In real, inflation-adjusted values, house prices in Phoenix increased 4% from January 2019 to January 2020. For the USA as a whole, real prices were up 1%.
Real house prices fell 2% in New York and Chicago from 12 months earlier.
House Price Momentum
In 9 metros, nominal house prices appreciated more slowly during the last 12 months compared to the previous 12 months. We saw upward price momentum increase in 5 metros, especially San Diego which was up 4% compared to the previous 12 months.
Price Appreciation Trends
House price appreciation (nominal) was bouncing back strongly on the West Coast after tanking from the spring of 2018 to the spring of 2019.
It looks to me like the increase in mortgage rates from late 2017 to late 2018 hit the hottest real estate markets the hardest but then as rates fell in 2019 those were the same markets that were bouncing back the strongest.
Most other metros were flat or fading.
30-Year Fixed Rate Mortgage Rate
The USA as a whole was seeing an increase in house price appreciation. National appreciation (nominal) was running at 3% from last May through November but bumped up to 4% in December 2019 and January 2020.
Note. You can find interactive versions of these charts for all 20 Case-Shiller metros here.
The January 2020 data is the latest available from Case-Shiller. The data is a 3-month moving average so what they call January is really the November-January average. It might be better to think of the January data as running quarterly data, that is, data for the quarter ending in January 2020.
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