The July 10- and 20-City Composite Case-Shiller Home Price Indices (non-seasonally adjusted) rose on a month-over-month basis and fell on a year-over-year basis, in line with Zillow’s forecast, which we released yesterday. This morning, the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices showed the 10- and 20-City Composites both rose 0.9% from June to July. Both composites show annual depreciation, however, with the 10-City composite down 3.7% and the 20-City down 4.1% compared to July 2010. Zillow predicted both composites would show a monthly appreciation but fall annually. The table below shows how our forecast compared with the actual numbers.
While the June-to-July increase is good news, marking the fourth consecutive month of increasing prices, Zillow Chief Economist Stan Humphries reminds us that S&P’s indices “are non-seasonally adjusted numbers (the ones Standard and Poor’s prefer to look at) and the seasonally adjusted numbers show essentially no change in home prices on a monthly basis.
“It’s one more month of respite from what are sure to be further price declines in the months ahead, unfortunately,” he said. “We really need to ignite job growth which will, in turn, boost consumer confidence and get household formation rates rising again, both of which will augment demand for housing. Without faster job growth, the supply-demand imbalance in the housing market remains acute, with foreclosures keeping supply levels high and homebuyers remaining on the sidelines due to fear and uncertainty — despite historic levels of housing affordability.”
To see how Zillow’s forecast of the June Case-Shiller indices compared, see our blog post from last month.
Forecasts for both variants of the Case-Shiller Index are based on the current Zillow Home Value Index value for July, which we released as part of our Real Estate Market Reports a couple weeks ago, the June Case-Shiller home indices numbers and the national percentage for foreclosure re-sales in July , which can be found in the Zillow real estate market reports.