Seattle records fastest-rising home prices in U.S.

SAN FRANCISCO, Dec. 26 (Xinhua) -- Seattle, a port city in Washington state on the U.S. west coast, has registered the fastest growth in home prises across the United States, according to the statistics released Tuesday.

Single-family housing prices, which have shot up 12.7 percent since October 2015, have recorded the strongest gains annually in Seattle, a major gateway for trade with Asia.

With the record new high, Seattle has led the country in home price increases for 14 months in a row, tied for the longest streak for any other metro areas nationwide since 2001.

The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller national home price index, released Tuesday by Standard & Poor's, indicated that the U.S. national home prices have outpaced wage growth to surge 6.2 percent, three times the rate of inflation.

The latest growth of the U.S. home prices was the biggest increase in more than three years, and Seattle home costs have jumped twice as fast as the U.S. average.

Local media said Seattle witnessed a peak of home price increase, by 13.5 percent, in the fall of 2017.

The city will continue to register a double-digit increase in the home prices for at least the first half of 2018, the media report said. Enditem