15. What does the latest Case-Shiller index show?

Short answer: In July 2026, U.S. home prices were 1.9% higher than a year earlier, a slight pick-up from June, but still below 3.4% inflation. Prices rose in the East and Midwest and fell in half of the West markets, with Seattle the weakest of the 20 cities.

Latest (July 2026):

What I make of it

Prices aren’t crashing, but they aren’t taking off either. They’re just falling behind inflation and incomes, and that’s how affordability gets fixed when sellers won’t cut prices: slowly, by standing still while everything else catches up.

It’s geography that matters. Markets that didn’t build much – mostly in the Northeast and Midwest – are holding up the national number. The weak markets are the expensive, tech-heavy and Sunbelt-style Western markets that boomed in 2020–22. Seattle dropping 1.6% while Chicago climbs almost 7% tells you more than the national average ever will.

Two things to keep in mind

Case-Shiller is slow. It tracks repeat sales of the same single-family homes, which makes it a clean trend measure. But the “July” number is really an average of May through July closings, released at the end of September. It’s telling you about spring and early summer, not today.

Also, the 20 cities aren’t the whole story. Although the national index covers the entire country, the city-level breakdown only covers 20 big metros. It excludes some of the weakest markets, like Cape Coral and Austin. So, if you’re reading the city list for where prices are falling hardest, you’re probably not seeing the worst of it.