Home Price Growth Nearly At Standstill: Case-Shiller

Growth in home prices, as it is for home sales, is almost at a standstill, at least on a monthly basis for Case-Shiller's 20-city adjusted index which inched only 0.1 percent higher in August. Year-on-year, the unadjusted index is still growing at healthy rate of 5.5 percent which, however, is down from 6.8 percent as recently as March and is the lowest rate since December 2016.

Outright monthly declines were posted in two cities where price traction is clearly slipping, Seattle at minus 1.0 percent in the month for year-on-year growth still very strong at 9.6 percent, and San Diego which fell 0.3 percent in the month for a mediocre year-on-year rate of 4.8 percent.

Las Vegas is once again the big headliner in the data, posting 1.1 percent monthly growth in August following 1.2 and 1.1 percent in the prior two months. Las Vegas leads the year-on-year growth rates at 13.9 percent. At the bottom, however, remain Washington DC and New York City at only 2.8 percent growth with Chicago little better at only 2.9 percent.

These results and trends are consistent with weakness seen in last week's FHFA house price index as well price data in the existing home sales report. However strong the 2018 economy is, it doesn't include home prices which are a central source of household wealth.