This Is the Market Where Home Prices Are Rising the Least

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Apr 28, 8:20AM EDT

Follow 24/7 Wall St. on Google

This post may contain links from our sponsors and affiliates, and Flywheel Publishing may receive compensation for actions taken through them.

This Is the Market Where Home Prices Are Rising the Least — © stevegeer / iStock via Getty Images

Home sales and prices have skyrocketed in the past year. Among the reasons are low mortgage rates that have shrunken inventory in some places, middle-class incomes that have held steady during the pandemic, and people who want to flee big cities for suburbs. In many markets, prices have risen by low double-digit percentages since early last year. In desirable suburbs near some cities, home prices, particularly of expensive houses, are up 50% or more.

A number of organizations track home prices. These include real estate websites like Realtor.com and Zillow, as well as data companies like ATTOM. The gold standard of home prices remains the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index, which measures prices back to January 2000.

The new Case-Shiller data cover February and compare prices nationally and in the 20 largest markets to the same month last year and the previous month of January 2021. The national composite index rose 12.0% for the month compared to the same month last year. Craig J. Lazzara, Managing Director and Global Head of Index Investment Strategy at S&P DJI, said:

More than 30 years of S&PCoreLogic Case-Shiller data help us to put February’s results into historical context. The National Composite’s 12.0% gain is the highest recorded since February 2006, exactly 15 years ago, and lies comfortably in the top decile of historical performance.

[nativounit]
He added that much of the rise in prices was due to migration from city centers to suburbs because of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The data shows that not all markets are created equal. Phoenix topped the list of 20 cities measured, with 17.5% growth in one year. San Diego followed at 17.0%, then Seattle at 15.4%. Among all regions, prices rose the most in the west, where the gain was 13.0%.

The city that lagged all others in February over the same month of last year was Chicago, which saw a gain of only 8.6%. The only other city with less than a double-digit increase was Las Vegas at 9.1%. In Las Vegas, the pandemic may have killed tourism, but Case-Shiller gave no reason for the low Chicago number.

Here are the one-year home price increases in America’s 20 largest cities:

Atlanta, 10.0%
Boston, 13.7%
Charlotte, 11.7%
Chicago, 8.6%
Cleveland, 12.5%
Dallas, 10.9%
Denver, 11.2%
Detroit, 11.7%
Las Vegas, 9.1%
Los Angeles, 11.9%
Miami, 11.0%
Minneapolis, 10.4%
New York, 11.6%
Phoenix, 17.4%
Portland, 11.4%
San Diego, 17.0%
San Francisco, 11.0%
Seattle, 15.4%
Tampa, 12.7%
Washington, 11.1%

Click here to see the housing markets where prices are rising fastest.
[wallst_email_signup]

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.