Local Home Prices Continue Climb, Outpace Other Metros

Home prices in the Twin Cities are continuing to climb and experiencing more significant gains than those in most of the nation’s other metropolitan areas, according to a report released Tuesday.
 
The Standard & Poor’s/Case-Shiller Home Price Index found that local home prices grew 8.8 percent between September 2011 and September of this year. Only one of the 20 metro areas included in the report—Phoenix—posted a more substantial year-over-year gain; home prices in that city increased 20.4 percent since last September.
 
Twin Cities home prices grew 5.7 percent in June, 6.4 percent in July, and 7.4 percent in August.
 
Home prices throughout the country increased by an average of 3 percent between last September and this September—only a fraction of the growth experienced in the Twin Cities but still significant in that September represents the sixth-consecutive month of national year-over-year gains. Among the 20 cities tracked by the index, two experienced a year-over-year decline—New York, where home prices decreased 2.3 percent, and Chicago, where home prices slid 1.5 percent.
 
Between August and September, home prices in the Twin Cities increased 1.1 percent; home prices in Phoenix increased by that same percentage over the period. Only two cities experienced more significant month-over-month gains—Las Vegas and San Diego, where home prices grew 1.4 percent between August and September. The figures are not seasonally adjusted.
 
The home price index, which lags two months, uses a base value of 100 from January 2000 to measure home-appreciation value since that time.
 
The Twin Cities’ September index was 126—which means that area home prices have appreciated about 26 percent since January 2000. The index for all 20 metro areas was 146.2 in June.
 
In a prepared statement, David M. Blitzer—chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices, LLC, which releases the home-price index report—touted the national home-price gains but also warned that “we are entering the seasonally weak part of the year.”
 
S&P Dow Jones Indices is a subsidiary of The McGraw-Hill Companies, a global resource for index-based data and research. S&P Dow Jones Indices is responsible for the S&P 500 and the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

The home price indices are released monthly and constructed to track the prices of typical single-family homes located in the 20 major metro areas included in the report.