Subscribe to TRD Data to see this content!
Rising inflation is continuing to chip away at home values across the country for the ninth month in a row.
Though home prices are still ticking up, their gains lag far behind the broader cost of living. In February, the S&P Cotality Case-Shiller National Home Price Index inched up just 0.7 percent year over year, the lowest growth rate since June 2023. It’s also a third of the increase of the Consumer Price Index for all goods in the U.S., which rose about 2.4 percent year over year. Meanwhile, core inflation — a measure that excludes food and energy prices, which can swing wildly — rose about 2.5 percent year over year.
The home price index’s annual growth has not surpassed both inflation measures since May 2025 (no inflation data was recorded in October because of federal budget cuts). The U.S. had previously not seen this trend since August 2023, when home prices rose 2.7 percent compared to 3.7 percent for the CPI and 4.4 percent for core inflation. That summer, mortgage rates surpassed 7 percent and reached nearly 8 percent, the highest in about two decades.
The growth of the Case-Shiller index has been moderating for some time, noted Sam Chandan, director of the real estate finance institute at New York University’s business school. Mortgage delinquencies remain low, a signal that the bottom has not fallen out of the housing market.
“There’s no strong indication of distress in the market,” Chandan said.
However, it is among the costliest times to own a home because of the rise in related payments, like home insurance. Chandan pointed to the National Association of Realtor’s Housing Affordability Index, a measure of whether a typical homeowner earns enough to qualify for a mortgage on a median-priced home, which has not returned to pre-pandemic norms.
“Housing is as unaffordable as it’s ever been,” Chandan said.
Subscribe to TRD Data to see this content!
There are also regional nuances. Markets in the Midwest and Northeast posted the highest annual growth in home prices, led by Chicago with 5 percent growth. The Big Apple followed the Windy City with 4.7 percent growth, and third place went to Cleveland, with 4.2 percent growth.
On the other end of the spectrum are Sun Belt markets, which have seen persistent price declines, and more Western locales. Denver recorded the steepest decline of the nation’s top metros, of -2.2 percent, followed by Tampa, with -2.1 percent.