United States: Home price growth slows in April
The S&P/Case-Shiller 20-city composite home price index—excluding Detroit due to reporting delays—eased to 0.9% month-on-month in April, down from March’s 1.1% rise. When adjusted for seasonal factors, home prices increased 0.3% in April, decelerating slightly from March’s 0.5% increase and missing market expectations of 0.5% rise.
Home prices grew 4.0% in annual terms in April, which was slightly stronger than March’s 3.9% increase and represented the quickest growth since December 2018. Gains continued to be the strongest in Phoenix for the eleventh month running, followed by Seattle and Minneapolis. Overall, 12 of the 19 cities, as Detroit data was unavailable in the index in April, registered higher annual price growth in April relative to March.
Commenting on April’s result, Craig J. Lazzara, managing director and global head of index governance at S&P Dow Jones Indices, noted:
“As was the case in March, we have data from only 19 cities this month, since transactions records for Wayne County, Michigan (in the Detroit metropolitan area) continue to be unavailable. This is, so far, the only directly visible impact of COVID-19 on the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices. The price trend that was in place pre-pandemic seems so far to be undisturbed, at least at the national level. Indeed, prices in 12 of the 20 cities in our survey were at an all-time high in April.”