Sept. home prices up 13.3% from year ago

Home prices continued rising in September, but many cities posted smaller monthly gains, according to a closely-watched barometer of the housing market.

The 20-city Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller Index increased 0.7% in September from August and was 13.3% ahead of a year ago, S&P said Tuesday.

While 13 of 20 cities showed higher year-over-year growth rates than in August, 19 cities had lower monthly increases in September than August.

On a month to month basis, Las Vegas and Tampa showed the most weakness — rates fell 1.6 percentage points in both markets from August. Charlotte was the only city in the index to show a decline in prices — 0.2% — its first since November 2012.

Detroit's 1.5 percentage point monthly gain was the strongest in the 20-city group, but Detroit is also the only market where prices are still below their January 2000 level, according to S&P.

Year over year comparisons show Las Vegas' prices were up 29.1% in September, the highest percentage. Other cities with gains over 20% were San Francisco, 25.7%; Los Angeles, 21.8%; San Diego, 20.9%.

"Housing continues to emerge from the financial crisis: the proportion of homes in foreclosure is declining and consumers' balance sheets are strengthening. The longer run question is whether household formation continues to recover and if home ownership will return to the peak levels seen in 2004," said David Blitzer, chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

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Two other reports on the housing market released Tuesday provided data on building permits and mortgage rate trends in October.

U.S. developers received approval in October to build apartments at the fastest pace in five years, a trend that could boost economic growth in the final three months of the year.

Permits to build houses and apartments were approved at a seasonally a! djusted annual rate of 1.034 million, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. That's 6.2% higher than the September rate of 974,000 and the fastest since June 2008, just before the peak of the financial crisis.

Meanwhile, buying a new home in October was at least slightly less costly as U.S. mortgage rates interrupted their upward trend, the Federal Housing Finance Agency reported Tuesday.

Contract interest rates on the composite of all mortgage loans decreased 0.04% to 4.32% from September to October, the agency said.

The FHFA's interest rate survey shows the average interest rate on a conventional, 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages of $417,000 or less was 4.58% in October, a decline of five basis points.