Different index methods capture home prices with varying speed and noise. Repeat-sales indexes like the S&P Cotality Case Shiller effectively track value changes but move slowly and lag the market. Market-based measures such as the Altos price or Altos pending price provide immediate readings of current prices. Price per square foot is a normalized, immediately available measure that reduces noise and partially controls for shifting property mix. Weekly Altos price-per-square-foot data show a May peak at $223/sqft (about 2% above last year) and a faster-than-normal decline after June that is poised to fall below 2024 levels. The spring 2022 buying frenzy ended in June and triggered rapid price adjustments through late 2022 and into 2023.
There are lots of ways to measure home prices. Repeat-sales indexes like the S&P Cotality Case Shiller are very effective at tracking changes in the value of homes, but are very slow and lag the actual market. Market-based measures like the Altos price or the Altos pending price are immediate and best to answer What do homes cost today? These measures move together generally but can have subtle differences in timing and noise.
For this reason, I like using price per square foot as a handy, normalized measure of home prices. It is immediately available, has less noise, and controls for some of the shifting mix of properties that can cloud some price measures. I was recently looking at the weekly Altos price-per-square-foot data and it highlighted an important trend that is harder to see in the other measures of home prices in mid-summer 2025: Home prices are about to turn negative compared to last year.
You can see in the data that home prices have a normal seasonal peak in May or June and then decline for the second half of the year. This year, home prices peaked at $223/sqft in the last week of May, about 2% above last year at the same time. These were very slight home price gains for the year, but gains nonetheless.
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