Home prices exploded under Biden and Covid Federal spending. Making housing unaffordable for millions. Now the turnover rates for homes is at its lowesst rate in decades.
Existing homes are now more expensive than new homes.
Florida housing is getting gut-punched from Naples to Punta Gorda.
Yikes! Median age of first time homebuyers is 40.
Fortunately, Joe Biden is out of office. But Chuck Schumer may make a comeback and restart the insane Covid-era spending. Schumer, the penultimate knucklehead in Congress, approved Ketanji Brown Jackson to sit on the Supreme Court of the USA.
Keep on printing money. It seems that home price growth requires The Fed to keep printing money.
S&P/Case-Shiller released the monthly Home Price Indices for November (“November” is a 3-month average of September, October and November closing prices). September closing prices include some contracts signed in July, so there is a significant lag to this data. Here is a graph of the month-over-month (MoM) change in the Case-Shiller National Index Seasonally Adjusted (SA).
The S&P Cotality Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index posted a 1.4% annual gain for November, in line with the previous month.
Real home values declined as consumer inflation (2.7%) outpaced the National Index gain (1.4%) by 1.3 percentage points.
Regional divergence persisted: Midwestern and Northeastern markets led by Chicago (+5.7%) and New York (+5.0%) posted gains, while Sun Belt cities including Tampa (–3.9%), Phoenix (–1.4%), Dallas (–1.4%), and Miami (–1.0%) saw declines. … “Regional patterns continue to illustrate a stark divergence. Chicago leads all cities for a second consecutive month with a 5.7% year-over-year price increase, followed by New York at 5.0% and Cleveland at 3.4%. These historically steady Midwestern and Northeastern markets have maintained respectable gains even as overall conditions cool. By contrast, Tampa home prices are 3.9% lower than a year ago – the steepest decline among the 20 cities, extending that market’s 13-month streak of annual drops. Other Sun Belt boomtowns remain under pressure as well: Phoenix (-1.4%), Dallas (-1.4%), and Miami (-1.0%) each continue to see year-over-year declines, a dramatic turnaround from their pandemic-era strength.
“Monthly price changes were mixed but leaned negative in November, underscoring persistent softness. On a non-seasonally adjusted basis, 15 of the 20 major metro areas saw prices decline from October (versus 16 declines in the previous month). Only a handful of markets – including Los Angeles, San Diego, Miami, New York, and Phoenix – eked out slight gains before seasonal adjustment. After accounting for typical seasonal slowing, the National Index inched up just 0.4% for the month, indicating that price momentum remains muted. … The S&P Cotality Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index, covering all nine U.S. census divisions, reported a 1.4% annual gain for November. The 10-City Composite showed an annual increase of 2.0%, up from a 1.9% increase in the previous month. The 20-City Composite posted a year-over-year increase of 1.4%, up from a 1.3% increase in the previous month. … The pre-seasonally adjusted U.S. National Index saw a drop of 0.1% and the 20-City Composite Index fell 0.03%, while the 10-City Composite Index increased 0.1%.
After seasonal adjustment, the U.S. National Index reported a monthly increase of 0.4%, and both the 10-City Composite and 20-City Composite Indices posted month-over-month gains of 0.5%.
The west may be the best, but not for office space vacancies. National office vacancy rates were 20.5% as of Q4 2025, according to Cushman and Wakefield.
Newsom country (California) leads the nation in terms of office vacancy with San Francisco leading the pack at 33.1, Seattle at 32.3% and LA CBD at 31.7%
Q4 2025 Office Vacancy Rates – Cushman and Wakefield
This is the opposite of the housing bubble from The Big Short where home prices in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and Florida rose then crashed. Instead, the fastest growing cities are in the northeast and midwest.
The Case-Shiller 20-City Home Price Index rose 1.3% year over year in October 2025, easing from a 1.4% increase in September and coming in slightly above market expectations of a 1.1% gain. This represents the smallest annual increase since July 2023, reinforcing signs that the US housing market is settling into a much slower growth phase. Home price appreciation continues to trail consumer inflation. With October CPI estimated at around 3.1%, inflation-adjusted home values appear to have edged modestly lower over the past year.
Regional data point to a pronounced geographic rotation. Chicago now leads all major markets with a 5.8% annual gain, followed by New York at 5.0% and Cleveland at 4.1%. In contrast, Tampa recorded a 4.2% decline, the steepest among the 20 cities, and its 12th consecutive month of falling annual prices. Other former pandemic boom markets, especially in the Sun Belt, are seeing the sharpest declines, led by Phoenix (-1.5%), Dallas (-1.5%), and Miami (-1.1%).
Housing price growth has stalled even though M2 money growth is higher YoY.
On the silver front, silver regained losses yesterday, but increased margin requirements are causing losses again.
Pending sales of existing homes in the US surged 3.3% MoM (more than the expected 0.9% MoM move) in November as a modest improvement in prices and mortgage rates encouraged buyers.
The gain was broad-based across regions and exceeded all but one estimate in a Bloomberg survey of economists, but left the YoY change in sales somewhat stagnant on an NSA basis.
Signings have now increased for four straight months, matching a streak seen during the frenzied housing market of the pandemic.
The trade association’s report on Monday showed contract signings rose in each US region last month to their highest levels of the year. The West posted the largest increase, followed by the South, the nation’s largest home-selling region.
November’s surge dragged the Pending Home Sales Index to its highest since Feb 2023…
Bloomberg reports that the recent data point to the gradual improvement many economists see for the housing market into 2026.
Mortgage rates that were close to 7% in May have since settled in the 6.3% to 6.4% range, and home prices are growing at a much slower rate compared to last year.
That’s helped fuel small gains in contract closings in recent months. However, economists and industry experts have widely different expectations for next year.
In a recent survey of nine market analysts, estimates for the home resale market ranged from 1.7% to 14% sales growth, with the rosiest projection coming from NAR’s Yun.
Pending-homes sales tend to be a leading indicator for previously owned homes, as houses typically go under contract a month or two before they’re sold.
Confounded Interest - Anthony B. Sanders 
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