NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Despite a recent spate of bad news coming out of the housing industry, home prices show signs of stabilizing.
National home prices jumped a substantial 3.6% in the past year, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index released on Tuesday. Prices also climbed 4.4% in the second quarter compared with a 2.8% plunge in the first quarter.
"While the numbers are upbeat, other more recent data on home sales and mortgages point to fewer gains ahead," said David M. Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor's. "Even with concerns about near term developments, we recognize that the housing market is in better shape than this time last year."
Of course, the positive report was buoyed by the government's tax credit program, which refunded as much as $8,000 for homebuyers. With that program now over, markets could cool.
"We all know what happened to housing after the homebuyers tax credit ended," said Mike Larson, real estate analyst for Weiss Research. "It's been an Acapulco-sized cliff-dive."
And because this report is a lagging indicator, Larson adds that "it would be foolhardy to think that this report tells us that prices will continue to rise." Instead, he expects prices to slowly deteriorate over the next several months.
Source: money.cnn.com
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