U.S. home prices rose 2.1% in the 12 months to August 2026, according to the S&P Cotality Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price Index, released Oct. 27. The gain was slightly faster than July's 1.9%, and it trailed the 3.4% rise in consumer prices over the same year by about 1.3 percentage points. Adjusted for inflation, the index was lower than a year earlier.

The Federal Housing Finance Agency's House Price Index, released the same day, showed a 2.4% rise from August 2025 to August 2026.

Two indexes, one direction

Both indexes are repeat-sales measures: they compare the prices of the same houses when they sell again, which keeps a month heavy with expensive sales from reading as a price jump. They differ in what they cover. Case-Shiller draws on recorded sales of single-family homes. The FHFA's flagship index is built from purchase-only, seasonally adjusted data on mortgages from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which leaves out all-cash purchases and loans above the conforming limit. The two often differ by a few tenths of a point for that reason.

The month, with and without seasonal adjustment

On a monthly basis, the national Case-Shiller index fell 0.2% from July to August before seasonal adjustment and rose 0.3% after it. Late summer is normally when prices start to cool, so the adjusted figure is the one that removes that pattern. The 10-city composite fell 0.4% before adjustment and rose 0.4% after; the 20-city composite fell 0.4% before and rose 0.3% after.

The FHFA index rose 0.3% in August on a seasonally adjusted basis. The agency revised July's gain down to 0.2% from the 0.3% it first reported.

Where prices moved

Among Case-Shiller's 20 large metro areas, Chicago posted the largest annual gain for a sixth month, at 6.7%, followed by New York at 6.2% and Cleveland at 4.3%. S&P listed annual declines in five metros: Seattle (down 2.0%), Las Vegas (down 1.3%), Dallas and Denver (each down 0.8%) and Tampa (down 0.4%). S&P did not publish an August figure for Detroit because of delays in recording transactions in Wayne County.

The 10-city composite rose 3.6% over the year and the 20-city composite 2.7%, both a little faster than in July.

What a 2.1% gain looks like on one house

As a rough illustration, a home worth $400,000 in August 2025 that tracked the national Case-Shiller index exactly would have been worth about $408,400 a year later. A basket of goods and services that cost $400,000 under the consumer price index would have risen to about $413,600 over the same 12 months. Individual homes vary widely around any index, so this is arithmetic on the average, not an estimate of any one property.

The FHFA data, sorted by the nine census divisions, ran from a 0.5% annual gain in the Mountain division to 4.4% in the East North Central division (Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin). Over the month, New England was lowest at a 0.8% decline and East South Central highest at a 2.1% gain.

What the numbers do not show

Both indexes run about two months behind the calendar, so August data says nothing yet about the autumn, when the average 30-year mortgage rate in Freddie Mac's weekly survey rose above 7% for the first time since January 2025. A national figure also blends very different local markets, as the spread from Chicago to Seattle shows. A homeowner looking for a figure closer to home can find the FHFA's index for states and many metro areas on its data page, and Case-Shiller publishes each of its 20 metros.

Next releases

Both the Case-Shiller index for September and the FHFA's quarterly report, with monthly data through September and the third quarter of 2026, are scheduled for Tuesday, Nov. 24.

Sources