Following more than a year of diminishing growth, annual home price gains have finally begun to inch upward, according to the latest S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index released Tuesday.
The index, which covers all nine U.S. census divisions, achieved an annual 3.2 percent gain in July, up from 3.1 percent in June.
The uptick reflects a heated housing market following sluggishness since March 2018. But the same cannot be said for America’s largest cities, according to CoreLogic data. Among the top 10 U.S. cities, the index rose only 1.6 percent, down from 1.9 percent in June.
“Home price gains remained positive in low single digits in most cities, and other fundamentals indicate renewed housing demand,” Philip Murphy, managing director and global head of index governance at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said in a press statement.
“According to the National Association of Realtors, the [year-over-year] change in existing home sales was positive in July for the first time in a number of months, and housing supply tightened since peaking in June,” he added.
The biggest gains occurred in Phoenix, Las Vegas and Charlotte, North Carolina, where home prices rose 5.8 percent, 4.7 percent and 4.6 percent, respectively.
Seattle, meanwhile, was the only city to see prices drop 0.6 percent although gains in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York were also just above zero.
Released on the last Tuesday of each month, the index tracks the value of single-family housing within the United States by analyzing a composite of single-family home price indices for the nine U.S. Census divisions. The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 10-City Composite Home Price Index is a value-weighted average of the 10 original metro area indices.