Home costs have reduced may be overhead, S&P states

May 31, 2023: Steep match in the housing market and low supply are heating home prices again.

Nationally, home prices in March were 0.7% higher than in March 2022, S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices said Tuesday.

“The modest increases in home prices we saw a month ago accelerated in March 2023,” said Craig J. Lazzara, managing director at S&P DJI, in a release. “Two months of increasing prices do not a definitive recovery make, but March’s results suggest that the decline in home prices that began in June 2022 may have ended.”

The 10-city composite, which includes the Los Angeles and New York metropolitan areas, dropped 0.8% year over year, compared with a 0.5% increase in the previous month. The 20-city composite, which includes Dallas-Fort Worth and the Detroit area, fell 1.1%, down from a 0.4% annual gain in the last month.

Home prices are rising again month to month, however. After seasonal adjustment, prices increased nationally by 0.4% in March compared with February. The 10-city composite gained 0.6%, and the 20-city composite rose 0.5%.

Lazzara also noted that the national price acceleration was apparent at a more granular level. Before seasonal adjustment, prices rose in all 20 cities in March (versus 12 in February), and in all 20, price gains accelerated between February and March.

Miami, Tampa, Florida, and Charlotte, North Carolina, saw the highest yearly increases among the 20 cities in March. Charlotte replaced Atlanta in third place. Compared before the year, 19 of 20 cities reported lower prices, with only Chicago showing an increase of 0.4%.

“One of the interesting aspects of our report continues to lie in its stark regional differences,” added Lazzara. “The farther West we look, the weaker prices are, with Seattle (-12.4%) now leading San Francisco (-11.2%) at the bottom of the league table. Unsurprisingly, the Southeast (+5.4%) remains the country’s strongest region, while the West (-6.2%) remains the weakest.”