Home prices just broke another all-time high. But things might be changing as price inflation slows
I might sound like a broken record, but home prices hit another all-time high in April, according to the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller index results released yesterday. National home prices rose 6.3% from a year earlier, and 1.2% from the month before. But that price inflation is moving at a slower pace.
“Last month’s all-time high came with all 20 markets accelerating price gains,” Brian D. Luke, head of commodities, real and digital assets at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said in the release, referring to March. “This month, just over half of our markets are seeing prices accelerate on a monthly basis. At 6.3% annual gains, the index has decelerated from the start of the year, with only two markets rising on an annual basis.”
Last year, a similar pattern occurred, where March and April saw price increases before a summer slowdown that trickled through to the fall, Luke said.
In March, home prices rose 6.5% from a year earlier, and 1.3% from the prior month. “The latest S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Index showed home sales prices continued to climb higher through April, hitting a new high, even as the pace of growth slowed,” wrote Realtor.com’s chief economist, Danielle Hale. And in both the 20-city composite and the 10-city composite, “annual price growth slowed in April compared to March,” according to Orphe Divounguy, a senior economist at Zillow.
It was the first time in close to a year that the annual rate of house price inflation slid, Thomas Ryan, economist at Capital Economics, wrote. And after seasonal adjustment, the national index showed a 0.3% increase in home prices between March and April, for the second straight time; so it “could be a sign that the increase in home listings this year has cooled the market,” Ryan noted. His team maintained its forecast that home prices would increase by 5% this year. Still, the hope is that once the Federal Reserve starts cutting interest rates, mortgage rates will fall, and approach Capital Economics’ end of year prediction of 6.5%, and buyers will come back, he said. (The daily 30-year fixed mortgage rate is currently 7.06%, and the weekly rate is 6.87%.)
Ryan expects price inflation to continue to slow in the coming months, and predicts home prices will rise 3% next year, and 2.5% in 2026. He suggested Capital Economics’ forecast was once considered above consensus, but isn’t anymore, as the general expectation is for home prices to rise 3.3% next year, and 3.4% the year after.
As Fortune previously reported, based on a separate analysis and different data, “annual growth showed signs of plateauing” in May, according to Redfin. Redfin suggested that with the pace of home price growth seemingly set to slow further, and mortgage rates potentially poised to drop, it could set up a showdown between buyers and sellers. If sellers were to rush back into the housing market, prices could cool more. If buyers were to do so, they could reaccelerate.
But of course, home prices are still high and so are mortgage rates. In May, home prices were 45% higher than before the pandemic, and the typical mortgage payment was roughly 115% higher, per Zillow.
In a related development, new home sales fell to a six-month low in May, according to data released today, with sales of single-family houses dropping 11.3% last month. And according to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the median sales price was $417,400. On the other hand, existing home sales fell 0.7% in May from a month earlier, and 2.8% from a year ago, according to data from the National Association of Realtors released last Friday. The median existing-home sales price was $419,300.
