Home prices continue to march higher, as they have through much of the COVID-19 pandemic. People have relocated from some huge cities on the east and west coasts, moving to places with larger homes for less money. The U.S. middle and upper classes remained employed, even when the economy turned down, which means home sales were driven by healthy incomes. Mortgage rates have remained near multidecade lows, as well. The rise in home prices has been in the double digits in many places. However, a few markets have done much better than others.
The gold standard for home prices is the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index, which has been analyzing these prices since January 2000. Its monthly data shows the national change in prices, month over month and year over year. The information covers the national figure and numbers for America’s top 20 cities. So that cities can be compared with one another over the period, each market’s home prices were indexed at 100 when the project began. The city where prices have risen the most is Los Angeles, where the index had risen to 333. The city with prices that have increased the least is Detroit, where the index was 144 in March.
In March, prices nationwide increased 13.2% year over year, the highest rate in 15 years. Craig J. Lazzara, managing director and global head of Index Investment Strategy at S&P DJI, commented “Housing prices continued to rise robustly in March 2021.”
The market with prices that soared the most in March was Phoenix, where they were up by 20.0%. San Diego followed closely at 19.1%, and then Seattle at 18.3%. The only city with a single-digit rise was Chicago, the second-largest market, where prices rose only 9.0%. In New York, the largest market, prices were up a relatively modest 12.3%.
These are the home price increases in the 20 largest markets compared to March 2020:
- Atlanta, 11.2%
- Boston, 14.9%
- Charlotte, 13.5%
- Chicago, 9.0%
- Cleveland, 12.9%
- Dallas, 13.4%
- Denver, 13.4%
- Detroit, 12.1%
- Las Vegas, 10.6%
- Los Angeles, 13.4%
- Miami, 12.2%
- Minneapolis, 11.0%
- New York, 12.3%
- Phoenix, 20.0%
- Portland, 13.5%
- San Diego, 19.1%
- San Francisco, 12.2%
- Seattle, 18.3%
- Tampa, 13.7%
- Washington, 12.2%
Click here to see the average size of a home the year you were born.
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