The numbers: Home-price growth continues to decelerate
For the third consecutive month, home-price appreciation occurred at a slower pace, according to a major price barometer released Tuesday, reinforcing the notion that the housing market is cooling after over a year of frenzied sales.
What happened?
The separate national index from the Case-Shiller report showed a 19.1% annual gain, down from a 19.7% increase in September. While lower on the monthly basis, this still represented the fourth-largest annual increase in home prices over the 34-year history of the data.
Phoenix once again led the country in terms of home-price growth, with a 32.3% increase, reinforcing research that showed it to be the housing market where housing affordability suffered the most over the past year. It was followed by two Florida cities, Tampa and Miami. Only six of the 20 major cities that the report tracks notched larger price increases in October than in September, though prices did continue to increase in all 20 cities.
“U.S. home prices moved substantially higher, but at a decelerating rate,” Craig J. Lazzara, managing director at S&P DJI, said in the report. “October’s gains were below September’s, and September’s gains were below August’s.”
