Wednesday, February 24, 2016

Latest Case-Shiller Home Price Index: Denver metro home price index up 10.2 percent

During December 2015, home price growth in the Denver area, according to the Case-Shiller index, remained at some of the highest levels seen in a decade, with year-over-year growth at 10.2 percent. That's down from November's year-over-year rate of 10.8 percent, but up slightly from December 2014's rate of 10.1 percent.

The first graph shows the year-over-year comparisons for the past decade:


We can see that growth is topping what it was during the nationwide housing bubble that existed prior to 2008. Clearly, for-sale housing demand remains rather robust in the region (at least as of December).

Compared to the 20-city composite index for home prices, Denver continues to see even greater growth. In fact, metro Denve rgrowth has been almost double the 20-city composite growth in recent months:


As noted here, as of December 2015, employment growth in Metro Denver has been slowing, but apparently not enough to bring down the sizable growth rates we've been seeing in home prices in recent years. Global and national economic trends do show reasons for concern about slowing economic growth, and we do see slowing employment growth stateside, but it seems we'll need current trends to persist longer before we see significant changes in for-sale housing demand in these numbers.