The price of a local home sold in December rose 9 percent from the same time a year ago, based on the S&P/Case-Shiller home price report released Tuesday. That boost is the highest year-ago increase for any given month since July 2010. Values have risen 11 straight months, Case-Shiller data show.
All but one city, New York, showed year-over-year progress in December. New York prices fell 0.5 percent, according to the monthly index. When looking at the 20 cities in the index together, prices are up 6.8 percent.
“Home prices ended 2012 with solid gains,” David M. Blitzer, chairman of the index committee, said in a statement. “Housing and residential construction led the economy in the 2012 fourth quarter.”
Blitzer said prices on a national level bottomed out in March and continue to show increases. That, along with other housing news, suggests that “while housing is on the upswing some of the strongest numbers may have already been seen.”
Phoenix and San Francisco saw the biggest year-over-year jumps, at 23 percent and 14.4 percent respectively.
What’s behind the uptick?
In San Diego, rising sales and a smaller inventory of available homes are driving up price.
Inventory here is near a 52-month low, with about 4,200 active home listings in the county, according to numbers from the San Diego Association of Realtors.
One key reason listings are so low: A significant share of homeowners are underwater on their mortgages, meaning they owe more than the house is worth. That means many homeowners who might want to sell are sitting on the sidelines until they regain equity in their property.
The share of borrowers in San Diego County with negative equity has eased though, dropping from 31 percent in the third quarter to 28 percent in the fourth quarter, based on recent data from real estate website Zillow.
Steady price increases should help fuel the housing recovery. They encourage more people to buy before prices rise further. Higher prices also build homeowners’ wealth, which can spur more spending and economic growth.
In a separate report, the Commerce Department said Tuesday that new-home sales across the nation rose nearly 16 percent in January to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 437,000. The percentage increase was the largest in nearly 20 years. And December’s sales were revised higher to 378,000 from 369,000.
Steady job creation and near-record-low mortgage rates are spurring more Americans to buy houses. Sales of previously occupied homes rose to the highest level in five years last year.
At the same time, the number of previously occupied homes for sale is at a 13-year low.
The supply of new homes for sale was unchanged last month at 150,000. That’s barely above August’s total of 143,000 — the smallest supply of new homes on records dating back to 1963.
At the current sales pace, it would take just 4.1 months to exhaust the number of new homes for sale, the lowest in eight years. Still, the increases in new-home sales are coming from depressed levels. Sales plummeted to a record low in 2011. And sales are still well below the 700,000 annual level that economists consider healthy.
The Case-Shiller index is calculated every month and has a two-month lag since it covers repeat sales.
Local real estate tracker DataQuick says the median price for a San Diego home sold in January was $350,000, nearly 15 percent higher than a year ago. The county is still about 32 percent below the peak of $517,500 set in November 2005.
Despite the increases, prices nationwide are still about 30 percent below the peak they reached at the height of the housing bubble in the summer of 2006. They are now at the same level as in the fall of 2003.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
By Lily Leung
