Home prices were up 8.4 percent year over year in October, according to the monthly S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, released Tuesday. Home sales and annual price increases typically begin to cool as the summer months end, but this year, annual price increases have remained strong.
The number even outpaced last month’s astounding price spike, which was the highest annual increase in more than 15 years.
“The surprising strength we noted in last month’s report continued into October’s home price data,” Craig J. Lazzara, managing director and global head of index investment strategy at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said in a statement.
“We’ve noted before that a trend of accelerating increases in the National Composite Index began in August 2019 but was interrupted in May and June, as COVID-related restrictions produced modestly decelerating price gains,” Lazzara added. “Since June, our monthly readings have shown accelerating growth in home prices, and October’s results emphatically emphasize that trend.”
The biggest rate of price increases was reported in Phoenix, Seattle and San Diego, all of which saw home prices climb more than 10 percent from October 2019.
The S&P/Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index is “a composite of single-family home price indices that is calculated every month; the indices for the nine U.S. Census divisions are calculated using estimates of the aggregate value of single-family housing stock for the time period in question.”
