S&P/Case-Shiller United States Home Price Index (HPI) Composite-20 n.s.a. m/m

S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index Composite-20 n.s.a. m/m reflects a change in repeat-sales house prices in 20 major metro areas in the reported month compared to the previous one. Seasonal fluctuations are not considered in the calculations.

The calculation involves the method of weighted repeated sales offered by Karl Case, Robert Shiller and Allan Weiss. Data for calculation are collected from local recording offices. Each metropolitan area is given a weigh used for the aggregate index calculation. The available data usually include the date, sale price and type of property. An object needs to have an earlier arms-length sales transaction in order to be included in the composite index calculation.

The following types of homes are excluded from calculation:

• New homes, because it is not possible to measure a change in its price before a repeated sale
• Condominiums and cooperatives, multi-unit houses and other objects, which cannot be determined as "single-family dwelling"
• Non arm-length transactions (e.g. transfers between family members)
• Transactions where the property type designation is changed (e.g., properties originally recorded as single-family homes are subsequently recorded as condominiums)
• Homes that have been repeatedly sold two or more times during six months

Different factors are usually formed in the market for different types of property, which determine demand, supply and prices. Therefore, for the correct evaluation of the market situation, the index includes segmentation by type of residential dwellings. The detailed version of this composite indicator includes three separate indices: prices for dwellings with low, medium and high cost. Changes in prices for expensive homes has a greater impact on the composite index result. This is one of the differences between the index and FHFA house price index, in which no segmentation is applied and an average price for all types of houses is calculated.

Also, S&P/CS calculation uses a smaller sample and does not take into account data from 13 states. The indicator is used for measuring activity in the real estate market in the largest US metro areas. Index growth can have a positive effect on dollar quotes.