by Wolf Richter
Wolf Street
20-City Index drops for 3rd month in a row, forms Double Top. Only Washington DC sets new all-time high.
The home price index for the 20 metros that the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index covers declined by 0.1% from the prior month, the third month in a row of declines. Year-over-year, the index was up 6.6%.
Year-over-year, wait a minute… today’s “January” 2024 reading is three months off the October 2023 peak, while January 2023 was seven months off the June 2022 peak. Year-over-year comparisons are meaningful when the index is very seasonal, and comparisons match the high in the current year to the high in the prior year, and the low in the current year to the low in the prior year. But this is not the case here. The highs are in different seasons (June v. October), because they were caused by factors other than the slight (if any) seasonality of the Case-Shiller index.
