San Francisco Real House Prices Fell 2%

Real, inflation-adjusted house prices in metropolitan San Francisco fell 2% from November 2018 to November 2019. The nominal S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index for San Francisco was flat over the 12 months but when you adjust for inflation San Francisco house prices fell slightly.

It was the same story in Chicago, real house prices fell 2%. New York real prices fell 1%.

Los Angeles prices bounced back a bit in November — up 1% — after seeing no gains in October.

Upward Price Momentum Still Slowing

Prices in most housing markets are still increasing but the increases are getting smaller. For the U.S. as a whole, houses prices are increasing one percentage point more slowly than they did over the year before that.

Last month none of the 20 metros covered by the Case-Shiller Index had appreciated more over the last 12 months than they did over the previous 12 months. This new November data, however, shows that house prices in Washington DC and San Diego increased one percentage point faster in the last 12 months than they did during the previous 12 months.

Price Appreciation Trends

After a huge slowdown in appreciation from the second half of 2018 through the first half of 2019 in some previously high flying housing markets, house prices in several slowing markets started to rebound in August and September. The general consensus among economists is the steep fall in mortgage rates from November 2018 to September 2019 was starting to have an effect. The rates on 30-year fixed rate mortgages fell from almost 5% in November 2018 to around 3.6% now.

The U.S. Housing Market

Nationally, annual house price appreciation was running around 6% during 2017 and the first half of 2018 before it started to fade. After running at a 3% annual appreciation rate for several months in 2019, U.S. house price appreciation increased slightly in November. The falling mortgage earlier last year could have an impact for months into 2020.

Note. You can find interactive versions of these charts and several more vizzes for all 20 Case-Shiller metros here.

The November data is the latest available from Case-Shiller. The data is a 3-month moving average so what they call November is really the September-November average. It might be better to think of the November data as the data for the quarter ending in November 2019.

This post first appeared on Forbes.com. To see the original, click here.