Earlier today, in its latest update looking at March home prices, Case Shiller pointed out that “home prices are continuing to rise at a 5% annual rate, a pace that has held since the start of 2015.” Actually that is an understatement: in 13 of 20, or two-third of the tracked metro areas, the pace of home appreciation over the past year was 6% or higher, or equivalent to three times the pace of core inflation. And with rents continuing to soar across the country, in many cases at a double digit clip, not to mention exploding healthcare costs, one wonders just what the BLS “measures” with its monthly CPI update.
In any case, for those lucky Americans who can afford to own a house instead of being stuck renting the New Normal American dream where they are prohibited from peddling fiction as their annual rent increases by 10% or more each year, here is the breakdown of the best and worst cities for home price appreciation in the U.S.
At the top, with annual price increases of 10% to over 12%, we find the usual west coast (and thus closest to China) suspects for the second month: Portland and Seattle, followed close behind by Denver and tech mecca San Francisco. On the other end once again are Washington, Chicago and New York. We wonder if Case Shiller used the UMich “random” telephone directory to calculate that NYC home prices rose almost exactly at the rate of core inflation in the past 12 months while ignoring the dramatic moves in the ultra luxury high end segment.
via http://ift.tt/25yAXIJ Tyler Durden