The region’s housing market slowed in June, showing signs that Washington’s booming home prices are now exposed to the same economic strains the rest of the country has weathered. In addition, new data shows that the slowdown began earlier this summer than originally thought, according to a new S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices report.
Home prices in June fell 1.2 percent from a year earlier, the report said. Prices for May were also adjusted to show a 1.7 percent decrease in area home values after more sales were reported. May home sales originally showed a 1.3 percent uptick.
| Summer slowdown in housing market | |||||||
| Annual price change: | |||||||
| Metro area | June | May | April | Mar. | Feb. | Jan. | |
| Washington DC | -1.2% | -1.7% | -0.5% | +1.3% | +2.1% | +2.3% | |
| Source: S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices | |||||||
Maureen Maitland, vice president of S&P Indices, said the upside is that the Washington region’s performance during the last two months was better than the rest of the country.
“The new data just happened to be ones that showed the market as a whole looked weaker,” she said. “On a relative level, D.C. [prices] increased from April to May to June … it’s still the number one market most months.”
Nationally, annual home prices in the top 20 markets fell by 4.5 percent from last June. However, month-to-month prices have inched up in most or all markets during the summer and the percentage of the annual price decrease have shrunk over the last two months. That shows the housing market is beginning to improve, Maitland said.
Last year’s rush to qualify for the first-time homebuyer’s tax credit also inflated prices, she added.
John McClain, deputy director of George Mason University’s Center for Regional Analysis, said the Washington area is “stabilizing” while the rest of the country is improving slowly.
“We are flattening out,” he said. “The positive thing is that you’re seeing the [positive] job data reflected in the rest of the … metro area markets.”
However, the region lost jobs in June and July, a reverse swing from the rest of the nation that some attribute to uncertainty in how much the federal government will spend here in the future.
McClain attributes the summer job loss to the termination of Census workers after last summer but said “if we’re wrong … the conclusion would be we’re becoming more like the rest of the country.”
