By Canadian Press

US home prices post 6.2 per cent annual gain in January

Mar 27, 2018 | 7:15 AM

WASHINGTON — U.S. home prices posted another big gain in January, pushed higher by a shortage of homes for sale.

Standard & Poor’s says its S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller national home price index climbed 6.2 per cent in January from a year earlier. That nearly matches December’s 6.3 per cent gain, which had been the fastest 12-month growth in nearly three years.

The price of houses is easily outpacing wage growth and inflation.

Prices rose 12.9 per cent in Seattle, 11.1 per cent in Las Vegas and 10.2 per cent in San Francisco. Chicago and Washington D.C. posted the weakest annual home-prices gains: 2.4 per cent.

Homes for sale are scarce. It would take just 3.4 months to snap up the supply of available homes at the current sales rate, down from an average since 2000 of 6 months.

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