The S&P/Case-Shiller house price indexes for March (based on January, February and March transactions) were released yesterday. The seasonally adjusted (SA) March value for the Seattle Metro area is 148.8. (The unadjusted index for March is 145.2.) The Seattle index peaked in May 2009 with a value of 190.6 (SA). From that point the the index fell 30.8 percent reaching a low of 131.8 in November of 2011. The current value is 12.9 percent above this low. This chart compares the performance of the Seattle index to that of the S&P/Case-Shiller 20-city index over the period since January 2000.

Because of the dot com bust and Boeing’s 9/11 related difficulties, the run-up in house prices during the 2000s was not as great in Seattle many other metro areas. The peak in the Seattle index occurred more than a year later than the peak in the 20-city index. Nevertheless, the Seattle index bottomed a few months before the 20-city index did. For the last year the two indexes have been on parallel paths.

Bill McBride at Calculated Risk notes:

… given the low level of inventory, pent up demand, significant investor buying, and some bounce off the bottom in certain areas – real prices have been increasing fairly rapidly over the last year.  I expect more inventory to come on the market and for price increases to slow.

This seems right to me.