Nobody should be very surprised that the Case-Shiller index rose again in August.
This time around, the long-suffering low tier turned in the best performance with a robust 2.5 percent increase. The middle tier rose 1.6 percent for the month and the high tier increased .3 percent, with the aggregate index rising 1.6 percent.
Here’s a graph of the three price tiers and the aggregate index since their bubble peaks:
The longer-term view shows the subprime-driven ascent and eventual collapse of low-priced homes:
And here’s a view of the tremendous improvement in the year-over-year rates of decline for all the indexes:
As of August, the aggregate index had risen 5.7 percent from its April low — an increase that is substantially larger than the spring rallies that typically pepper multi-year housing busts.