SEATTLE �� Greater Seattle has now led the nation in home price increases for 20 months in a row, tied for the second-longest streak.
The cost of a single-family home across the metro area rose 13.1 percent in April compared with a year earlier, according to the monthly Case-Shiller home-price index, released Tuesday. It's about the same growth the region has had for a while, month after month after agonizing month for buyers.
The increase barely outpaced Las Vegas, where prices rose 12.7 percent, and San Francisco, where home values rose nearly 11 percent.
Seattle has been the hottest housing market in the country since September 2016. Since then, typical home prices here have gone up about $200,000 _ about eight times the national average.
At the beginning of the streak, the typical house cost $625,000 in Seattle and $768,000 on the Eastside. Now median-priced homes are selling for $830,000 in Seattle and $960,000 on the Eastside.
The stretch is not normal. Only two other metropolitan areas have experienced anything like this since the Case-Shiller data index in 1987.
San Francisco also led the country in home-price increases for 20 months during the dot-com bubble, 1999 to 2001, while Portland did so for 23 months, 1990 to 1992.
Affordability continues to worsen for homebuyers, as it has for years. Last week, the Washington state Employment Security Department said wages for workers statewide rose last year at the fastest rate since 2007. It was good news for workers whose incomes have been slow to rebound since the recession.
And yet the 5 percent increase in pay for Washington's workforce amounted to less than half the statewide increase in home prices. (Washington leads all states in home-price growth, as it has for about two years.) King County wages rose 6 percent last year, also half the rate of home-price increases.
Seattle's annual gain in home values is twice the national average. But in the past month, prices rose 2.7 percent, also leading the nation and nearly three times the national average. It was the largest monthly increase on record for the month of April in Seattle.
Home prices here had grown pretty evenly for a while, but the prices for the cheapest homes in the region have the biggest percentage increases � rising 16 percent a year � while the most expensive homes are rising 12 percent. Since the index covers the full metropolitan area, that generally means that houses on the farthest edges of the region, like Tacoma and Everett, are getting the biggest price increases.
The Seattle area is one of three regions covered on the Case-Shiller list _ with Dallas and Denver _ where home prices are above their bubble high from a decade ago when adjusted for inflation. Unadjusted prices are up 31 percent over their pre-recession peak, and are up 95 percent since their 2012 low.
If there is any positive sign for buyers, it's that the number of homes for sale has started to rise after years of steep declines. The for-sale inventory remains very low by historical standards, however, and the trend would have to continue for many more years before the market returns to anything resembling healthy for buyers.
