by Calculated Risk on 11/29/2020 11:57:00 AM

The Case-Shiller house price indexes for September were released last week. Zillow forecasts Case-Shiller a month early, and I like to check the Zillow forecasts since they have been pretty close.

From Matthew Speakman at Zillow: September Case-Shiller Results & October Forecast: Taking Off in Earnest

The weather cooled, but the pace of home price appreciation remained red hot into September.

The national Case-Shiller Home Price Index rose 7% year-over-year in September. The smaller 10- and 20-city composite indices grew more slowly, at 6.2% and 6.6% year-over-year, respectively. The annual rate of growth was faster in August than in July in all three main indices. On a monthly (seasonally adjusted) basis, the 10- and 20-city indices were each up by more than 1% (1.2% and 1.3%, respectively), and the national index was up 1.4% from August.
...
With mortgage rates staying near their lowest levels ever, buyers remain eager to grab the relatively few homes that are listed on the market, and do so quickly – homes went under contract two weeks faster in September than they did a year earlier. Home prices are normally sticky, meaning that they often take a while to respond to market shifts. These elevated levels of market competition have been placing upward pressure on prices for months, but home prices have just recently began to take off in earnest. Some measures show home prices now growing at a faster pace than they ever have. While the worsening spread of COVID-19, and the economic uncertainty that accompanies it, do pose some potential risks to the booming housing market, it appears unlikely that this remarkable growth in home prices will abate in the coming months.

Annual growth in [October] as reported by Case-Shiller is expected to accelerate in all three main indices. S&P Dow Jones Indices is expected to release data for the October S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Indices on Tuesday, December 29.
emphasis added

The Zillow forecast is for the year-over-year change for the Case-Shiller National index to be at 7.7% in October, up from 7.0% in September.

The Zillow forecast is for the 20-City index to be up 7.3% YoY in October from 6.6% in September, and for the 10-City index to increase to be up 6.8% YoY compared to 6.2% YoY in September.