Case-Shiller Home Prices Index, Adjusted For Inflation 2015

Here’s an update on residential real estate prices via the July 2015 update of the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices. Included is this chart of their 20-City Composite Home Price Index, which tracks the value of residential real estate in 20 metropolitan areas of the US:

Overall, the S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index recorded a 4.7% increase over the last 12 months. You can check more cities in the PDF, but the ones with the highest gains over the past 12 months are San Francisco at 10.4%, Denver at 10.3%, and Dallas at 8.7%.

What do home prices look like after being adjusted for inflation? We all tend to think of house prices in terms of nominal values. For example, I bought my first house in 2007 (of course) and I’ll always remember my original purchase price. But that was 8 years ago and even though inflation hasn’t been high it has still been inching along. From June 2007 to June 2015, inflation rose 12% (CPI-U).

As shared in previous updates, here is the Shiller 20-City index adjusted for inflation (CPI-U). Both data sets are not seasonally-adjusted and scaled to 100 as of January 2000.

Home prices are rising even after accounting for inflation, but this bottom chart presents a more tempered view of things.

Still, I feel for first-time homebuyers faced again with housing prices that appear to march upwards every month (and potentially out of reach).