Wednesday, September 28, 2022 / by Juan Grimaldo
Once-reigning Phoenix continues slide in US home price growth ranking
It’s no secret at this point that the housing market in the Phoenix metro — and in the U.S. as a whole — has been steadily slowing the past few months, but the Valley continues to fall behind other markets when it comes to home price growth.
The Valley, which until this spring had the highest home price growth percentage in the nation for nearly three years, has fallen yet again on the latest S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index, released Sept. 27.
The Phoenix metro fell to No. 5 among nation’s 20 largest housing markets for year-over-year price growth in July, with prices up 22.4% from a year earlier.
The average home price in the Valley was $343,180 in July, according to the index, which still represents a meteoric rise from the pre-pandemic average of $194,000 in July 2019,
Even though home values remain strong compared to last year, annualized price growth has tumbled a full 10 percentage points since March.
The Valley fell to second place in March, when its year-over-year price gains were still at a lofty 32.4%. After that, Phoenix slipped to No. 3 in April (with 31.3% growth) and then to No. 4 in both May (29.7%) and June (26.6%).
For Phoenix, it was only a 0.1% drop from June to July, a softer landing than the full percentage-point drop a month earlier and the more precipitous drops before that. But the metro’s slide has been steady in relation to other metros in the Case-Shiller survey.
Leading the nation ahead of the Valley on the Case-Shiller index were Tampa, which was No. 1 with 31.8% year-over-year price growth, followed by Miami (31.7%), Dallas (24.7%), Charlotte, North Carolina (23.6%) and Atlanta (22.8%).
In addition, only seven markets on the 20-city list to post month-over-month price gains in July — Atlanta, Charlotte, Chicago, Cleveland, Miami, New York and Tampa. Las Vegas saw no month-over-month change in the report.
Numbers reflect a 'forceful deceleration'
Craig J. Lazzara, managing director at S&P DJI, said in an analysis of the report that July’s numbers reflect a “forceful deceleration” in the housing market. He pointed out that while the National Composite Index rose by 15.8% in the 12 months ended July, that was down 2.3% from the June increase of 18.1%. He said that monthly difference was the largest deceleration in the history of the index.
“The theme of strong but decelerating prices was reflected across all 20 cities,” Lazzara said in a statement. “July’s year-over-year price change was positive for each one of the 20 cities, with a median gain of 15%, but in every case July’s gain was less than June’s.”
And with the Federal Reserve continuing to boost interest rates and mortgage financing becoming more expensive, Lazzara said the pattern is likely to continue.
“Given the prospects for a more challenging macroeconomic environment, home prices may well continue to decelerate,” he said in the statement.
A 30-year fixed rate mortgage is 6.29%, which is 3.41% higher than it was this time last year, according to Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey.
A recent report from Zillow (Nasdaq: ZG) looked at numbers from its own platform between July and August and found that home prices in the Phoenix metro were down 1.5% month-over-month during that period, which was a smaller slide than July’s, but a larger one than across the nation as a whole. In general, the report found that Western U.S. markets were seeing the steepest declines in home values of late.
Monthly mortgage payments in Phoenix averaged $2,140 in August, Zillow said, which was 55.86% higher than $1,373 of a year earlier and 110.42% higher than the $1,017 of August 2019. Nationally, mortgage prices were 83% higher than August 2019.