San Francisco Bay Area Home Price Index Rises

The S/P Case Shiller home price index numbers were posted on May 29th. Looks like the San Francisco and Bay Area numbers were up. See the graph here.

As per the Macro Markets website, here is the definition of the S/P Case Shiller Home Price index:

The S&P/Case-Shiller® Home Price Indices are designed to be a reliable and consistent benchmark of housing prices in the United States. Their purpose is to measure the average change in home prices in a particular geographic market. They are calculated monthly and cover 20 major metropolitan areas (Metropolitan Statistical Areas or MSAs), which are also aggregated to form two composites – one comprising 10 of the metro areas, the other comprising all 20. The indices measure changes in housing market prices given a constant level of quality. Changes in the types and sizes of houses or changes in the physical characteristics of houses are specifically excluded from the calculations to avoid incorrectly affecting the index value.

This uptake in the index has been deemed small, but I would say it does reflect the large amount of positive activity we have been seeing currently in the market.