The US housing market is truly bizarro world! San Francisco and Seattle are down near 10% year-over-year (YoY) while Chicago and Cleveland lead in price gains.
The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index, covering all nine U.S. census divisions, reported 0.0% annual change in June, up from a loss of -0.4% in the previous month. The 10-City Composite showed a decrease of -0.5%, which is an improvement on the -1.1% decrease in theprevious month. The 20-City Composite posted a year-over-year loss of -1.2%, up from -1.7% in the previous month.
Notice that The Fed’s balance sheet is slowly unwinding (green line) and real weeky “usual” earnings are finally positive after two long years of decline (red line). No growth or loss in home prices at the national level.
How about at the metro level? Chicago, Cleveland, and New York again led the way reporting the highest year-over-year gains among the 20 cities in June. Chicago remained in the top spot with a 4.2% year-over-year price increase, with Cleveland in at number two with a 4.1% increase, and New York held down the third spot with a 3.4% increase. There again was an even split of 10 cities reporting lower prices and those reporting higher prices in the year ending June 2023 versus the year ending May 2023; 13 cities showed price acceleration relative to the previous month.
But The West is where home prices fell and fell hard. The biggest losers were San Francisco (-9.7% YoY) and Seattle (-8.8% YoY). Bubble cities of Phoenix (-7..5% YoY) and Las Vegas (-8.2% YoY) round out the four biggest losers in the nation.
The really interesting chart show the surge in home prices following The Great Recession of 2008 and ensuing financial crisis and post Covid. Of course, the commonality in the surge is the massive expansion of money supply thanks to a hyperactive Federal Reserve.
The puppetmaster of bizarro world? The Federal Reserve!
