US Home Prices Rose 1.5% in June as Chicago Gained 6.9% and Seattle Slipped

US home prices rose 1.5% in the year to June on the Case-Shiller index, with the metro spread running from Chicago 6.9% up to Seattle 1.9% down.

The S&P Cotality Case-Shiller National Home Price Index rose 1.5% in the year to June 2026, an acceleration from 1.2% in May. The 10-city composite gained 2.9% and the 20-city composite 2.1%, and sixteen of the twenty tracked metros recorded faster annual appreciation in June than they had a month earlier. On a seasonally adjusted basis the national index added 0.13% over the month; before adjustment it added 0.37%.

A nine-point gap separates the strongest and weakest metro

Chicago led the twenty at 6.9% annual growth, more than double the 20-city composite. Seattle was the only metro in negative territory, at -1.9%. New York posted the strongest single month, up 1.0% between May and June. That range, close to nine percentage points from Chicago to Seattle, is the reason a single national number travels badly across a market this size. Rebecca Kaufman, associate director of commodities at S&P Dow Jones Indices, framed the June reading in real rather than nominal terms: "While home prices continue to decline in real terms, lower inflation and firmer nominal growth helped slow that pace."

Two official indices, published the same morning, disagree

The Federal Housing Finance Agency released its own second-quarter House Price Index on 25 August, hours after Case-Shiller. It put annual growth at 2.1% and quarterly growth at 0.3%, with the seasonally adjusted June index unchanged from May. The 0.6-point gap is methodological rather than a contradiction. The FHFA index is built from purchases and refinancings backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac conforming mortgages, so it excludes cash buyers and jumbo loans entirely; Case-Shiller is a repeat-sales index covering all price bands within twenty metropolitan areas. Anyone quoting a single US growth rate is quoting a methodology as much as a market. Glopra's own tracking of the US national market currently carries 2.2% annual growth, closer to the FHFA reading.

Nominal growth now sits well below rental income

Glopra values the US national market at $2,454 per square metre on a 6.71% gross rental yield, with a bubble-risk score of 57 out of 100 — the middle of the scale. With nominal price growth at 1.5% to 2.2% depending on the index, and inflation eroding that further in real terms, the income leg of a residential position is currently doing several times the work of the capital leg. Miami, the US city Glopra tracks separately, shows the same pattern in a more expensive form: $5,802 per square metre, a 6.84% gross yield and 1.81% annual price growth, on an elevated bubble score of 75. The June data does not change the direction of the US market so much as confirm how narrow the national story has become — one metro at 6.9%, another below zero, and a headline figure that describes neither.

Sources: S&P Cotality Case-Shiller, 25 Aug 2026 https://press.spglobal.com/2026-08-25-S-P-Cotality-Case-Shiller-Index-Reports-Annual-Gain-in-June-2026; Cotality, 25 Aug 2026 https://www.cotality.com/press-releases/case-shiller-august-2026; FHFA House Price Index 2026 Q2, 25 Aug 2026 https://www.fhfa.gov/reports/house-price-index/2026/Q2

Market data: United States · Miami