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The month of October provided yet more evidence that the surge in home prices this year has something quite different than the typical spring/summer rallies that take place within longer-term housing downturns.
The median price per square foot of resale properties rose for both single family homes and condos, by 1.4 percent and 2.0 percent respectively. The following graph shows the decline and then eventual rise in this price measurement since the 2005 peak:
If the Case-Shiller proxy discussed in the prior article is correct for October, the index will have measured a 10.0 percent price rise from its April low:
By contrast, the biggest summer rally within the 1990s bust was only 2.3 percent. The Case-Shiller proxy has also hit a year-over-year decline of just .1 percent, meaning that prices were effectively flat for the year. This makes for its own interesting historical comparison, but I will save that for a future post.