Case-Shiller Index

How would you know it is the best time to purchase your dream home? Or, to invest on residential homes? Have you ever been in a bad spot by putting your home on the market when there was a recession? Let's look at the Case Shiller Index, the leading measure of home prices in the U.S., and how it would help us regardless if we are buying, selling, or just looking.

S&P Corelogic Case-Shiller National Home Price Index, or the Case-Shiller Index, is a group of indices that monitors, tracks, or measures price changes for residential houses in the United States based on previous recorded home sales. The Case-Shiller Index was developed to help people do options trading on the housing market and determine the future of home prices.  It provides an insight into indicators such as when the best time would be to invest, how a particular region performs economically, and how businesses in the housing sector perform. It is designed to provide consistent and reliable measures of the decrease and increase of market value of residential properties in particular regions. 

How indices are measured

The index is measured based on the data collected for the target months on transactions of all residential properties. It is calculated monthly using a period of three months where the index point is the month in question and its preceding two months. For example, the index point is December 2021, therefore, repeat sales data is from October, November, and December of 2021. This is to offset delays from gathering data and to make the sample size large enough to produce viable price changes. 

Methodology

Repeat Sales Methodology -The repeat-sales method is a procedure that calculates sales price changes of the same piece of real estate property overtime.  

U.S. National Index Methodology - The U.S. National Index tracks the value of a single-family home and a composite of price indices for the nine census divisions in the U.S. The reference period is ten years since it is based on the U.S. Census of Housing: 1990-1999, 2000-2009, 2010-2019.

What it does and doesn't track

  • It tracks single-family, detached homes
  • It does not track New Construction
  • Condos and co-ops are tracked, but not included in the major indices

Indices and schedule of release

The Case-Shiller Home Price Index measures house price inflation by looking at repeated sales of the same single-family houses. The price of houses in January 2000 is given the value of 100. So a Case-Shiller value of 200 means house prices have doubled since January 2000.

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