For the second month in a row, Chicago has posted some of the most positive price increases in the nation in the June Case-Shiller Home Price Indices from Standard & Poor’s.

For the second month in a row, Chicago home prices rose strongly in the Case-Shiller Home Price Indices from Standard & Poor’s, rising 4.6 percent from May to June.

Chicago was the talk of the real estate community last month, when its monthly appreciation from April to May of 4.5 percent was the best of all 20 metropolitan areas surveyed by S&P; and indeed, in the latest Case-Shiller, only Detroit and Minneapolis posted higher monthly price gains.

June Case-Shiller Home Price Indices

Nationally, the news was similarly promising:

• All three composites of the Case-Shiller ended 2012’s second quarter with positive annual growth rates, the first time that’s happened since the summer of 2010.
• The overall national composite for the second quarter was up 1.2 percent year-over-year and 6.9 percent from the first quarter, while the 10- and 20-City Case-Shiller Composites posted increases of 5.8 percent and 6.0 percent from the first quarter.
• The 10- and 20-City Composites also increased annually by 0.1 and 0.5 percent and monthly by 2.2 and 2.3 percent, respectively.
• All 20 cities tracked by S&P showed positive monthly gains for the second consecutive month, and 18 of the 20 had better annual returns in June than in May.

Positive Home Price Trend

David M. Blitzer, the chairman of the Index Committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices, was surprisingly positive with the data. Though far from bearish, Blitzer has consistently sprinkled his 2012 reports with cautious optimism, but with June’s Case-Shiller, he offered no such reservations.

“We are aware that we are in the middle of a seasonal buying period,” Blitzer said, “but the combined positive news coming from both monthly and annual rates of change in home prices bode well for the housing market.”

As of the second quarter of 2012, average U.S. home prices as measured by the the national composite are back to early 2003 levels.