> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://the-long-horizon.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Your house got more expensive and bought less - URL: https://the-long-horizon.ghost.io/your-house-got-more-expensive-and-bought-less/ - Published: 2026-09-30T21:00:26.000Z - Updated: 2026-09-30T21:00:26.000Z - Description: Home prices rose 1.9% over the year to July while inflation ran 3.4%. That is the fourteenth month running. - Author: Jonathan Morgan Your house got more expensive and bought less ## **The Horizon** Home prices rose again in July, and nearly every report said exactly that. The national index finished 1.9% above where it stood a year earlier. Consumer prices over the same twelve months rose 3.4%. The asset got more expensive and bought less at the same time. That has now happened fourteen months in a row. A trader has no use for a fourteen-month streak, and a builder who intends to hold property into the 2040s has little else worth looking at. No statement reports this. The purchasing power of a house is something you work out yourself, from two numbers published two weeks apart. ## **The Event** S&P Dow Jones Indices published the July S&P Cotality Case-Shiller results on Tuesday, September 29, at 9:00 a.m. Eastern. The U.S. National Home Price Index rose 1.9% over twelve months, up from 1.6% in June. The 10-City Composite gained 3.4% against 3.0% a month earlier. The 20-City Composite gained 2.5% against 2.2%. Monthly movement was thinner than the annual figures suggest. The national index rose 0.3% seasonally adjusted, 0.12% unadjusted, and the unadjusted 20-City reading came in fractionally negative. Dispersion across metros was wide. Chicago led at 6.9% over the year, with New York at 5.8% and Cleveland at 4.2%, while Seattle fell 1.6%, Las Vegas 1.3% and Denver 1.1%. Rebecca Kaufman of S&P Dow Jones Indices wrote that home prices "continued to decline in real terms in July 2026, marking the 14th consecutive month of real declines." She added that slightly lower inflation and stronger nominal appreciation had narrowed the gap. Sponsored ### **P.I.P. partnerships went up 7.2%. The S&P lost 4.1** On February 28, Iran's Supreme Leader was killed. In the aftermath of that assassination… - The Strait of Hormuz closed. - 20% of global oil was blocked. - Oil prices hit $117 a barrel. But through it all… The 11 partnerships inside the Patriot Income Plan \[P.I.P.\] went up 7.2%, on average. The S&P lost 4.1%. Even more impressive… All 11 partnerships inside P.I.P. kept paying distributions to investors. Together they produced 79% total combined gains. Why? Because the partnerships inside P.I.P. make money from America's energy infrastructure regardless of whether we're at war or not. So when the world scrambled for energy, P.I.P. produced more revenue. 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A 1.5 point annual gap held for a decade removes about 14% of the asset's real value, and for two decades about 26%, on the assumption the gap persists. That assumption is the part Kaufman's sentence undercuts. The gap narrowed in July because inflation eased and nominal appreciation strengthened, which is the mechanism that ends a streak like this rather than extends it. The national index is also not a market anyone can buy. Chicago at 6.9% and Seattle at negative 1.6% sit inside the same figure, 8.5 points apart. A builder owns one metro rather than twenty. His real outcome is his own city's line, and the national number reports what the average of other people's cities did. Seasonal adjustment is doing visible work this month. The national index rose 0.3% adjusted against 0.12% raw, and July is the strongest stretch of the selling year. A raw gain near zero in the month that normally delivers the best result is the softer of the two readings. It is also the one closer to what a seller actually received. The bill that lands outside the brokerage account comes by mail. Assessments follow nominal value, so a house that gained 1.9% and lost purchasing power is still taxed on the gain. None of that argues against owning the house. It argues against counting the house as the inflation protection inside a portfolio, because for fourteen months it has not been that, while the fixed-rate mortgage against it has been repaid in money losing 3.4% a year. ## **The Watch** The August index publishes Tuesday, October 27, at 9:00 a.m. Eastern. These indices appear on the last Tuesday of each month, and the number to read is the gap against inflation rather than the headline gain. September consumer prices arrive October 14 at 8:30 a.m. Eastern. That release supplies the other half of the comparison, and a print under the nominal appreciation rate ends the streak without house prices doing anything at all. The metro spread is the third thing to track. Chicago and Seattle moving further apart means the national figure is describing less of what any individual owner holds. A house has been gaining in dollars and losing in purchasing power for fourteen months, and only one of those two ever shows up on a statement.