S&P/Case-Shiller: December 2012

Today's release of the S&P/Case-Shiller (CSI) home price indices for December reported that the non-seasonally adjusted Composite-10 price index increased a slight 0.25% since November while the Composite-20 index increased 0.16% over the same period.

The latest CSI data demonstrates, more or less, that the typical seasonal pattern is continuing to play with price weakness coming as a result of lower seasonal transactions.  If this trend continues, prices should continue to remain flat to decline into the February-March release in advance of the typical uplift from the more active spring transactions.

It's important to recognize though that on a year-over-year basis, nominal prices remain in positive territory possibly indicating the current seasonal weakness may be minor compared to recent years.

The 10-city composite index increased 5.95% as compared to December 2011 while the 20-city composite increased 6.84% over the same period.

Both of the broad composite indices show significant peak declines slumping -29.96% for the 10-city national index and -29.33% for the 20-city national index on a peak comparison basis.

To better visualize today’s results use Blytic.com to view the full release.