Metro Atlanta Home Prices Leap 15.7% in March

The Tuesday release of the monthly S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices report revealed that metro Atlanta home prices leaped 15.7 percent year-over-year in March.

Home prices spiked 10.3 percent year-over-year nationally.

But both locally and nationally, price growth is slowing as Atlanta only showed only a 1 percent increase from February to March, and nationally the growth was just a mere 0.2 percent.

Nineteen of the 20 cities where data was presented showed positive returns in March – New York was the only city to decline. Dallas and Denver reached new index peaks. See the attached release for more details and charts.

“The year-over-year changes suggest that prices are rising more slowly,” David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said in the release. “Annual price increases for the two Composites have slowed in the last four months and 13 cities saw annual price changes moderate in March. The National Index also showed decelerating gains in the last quarter. Among those markets seeing substantial slowdowns in price gains were some of the leading boom-bust markets including Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Phoenix, San Francisco and Tampa.

“Despite signs of decelerating prices, all cities were higher than a year ago and all but New York were higher in March than in February. However, only Denver and Dallas have set new post-crisis highs and they experienced relatively lower peak levels than other cities. Four locations are fairly close to their previous highs: Boston (8%), Charlotte (9%), Portland (13%) and San Francisco (15%).

“Housing indicators remain mixed. April housing starts recovered the drop in March but virtually all the gain was in apartment construction, not single-family homes. New home sales also rebounded from recent weakness but remain soft. Mortgage rates are near a seven-month low but recent comments from the Fed point to bank lending standards as a problem. Other comments include arguments that student loan debt is preventing many potential first time buyers from entering the housing market.”