Adding to growing evidence of a slight seasonal jump in home prices during July, Denver-based default management firm Integrated Asset Services, LLC said Tuesday that its IAS360 House Price Index found a 0.9 percent monthly rise in home prices nationally during July. Prices remained 11.4 percent off year-ago levels, the company said; during June, home prices were 11.5 percent off of year-ago levels. Taken together, the IAS data — which is not seasonally-adjusted, so as to allow for more direct comparison of data — clearly suggests a seasonal bump in home prices during July. The fact that annualized declines remained essentially constant between June and July should be telling of a larger long-term trend in housing, however. While the IAS data shows three of four U.S. census regions posting monthly gains in July relative to June, because the data is not seasonally-adjusted, the most accurate comparison in the data is to year-ago totals. And on that front, every major census region — and 7 of 9 census divisions — are showing annual price declines. Both the Mountain and Pacific divisions within the Western census region posted double-digit annualized price declines in July, with the Pacific reporting a 19.3 percent drop in prices. The index’s neighborhood-level data, however, clearly shows just how varying real estate pricing can be within a given MSA: consider the New York area, which saw prices gain 3.8 percent between June and July. Unless you lived in Ocean, NJ — then you saw prices fall 4.5 percent. In the Chicago MSA, prices have fallen .2 percent year-over-year — unless you live in DuPage, which has seen prices rise 4.4 percent in the same time frame. McHenry residents in the Chicago area have seen prices fall 4.8 percent in the past year, underscoring just how local real estate really can be. The jump in national prices reflected in the IAS360, however, likely represent a seasonal trend more than anything else; HW reported on Sept. 5 that asking prices in most major MSAs resumed a downward trend in August after posting seasonal increases through July. That would suggest we’ll likely see a fall in most month-to-month indicators starting with August or September’s sales data. Related links: view IAS360 key MSA chart For more information, visit http://www.iasreo.com.

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