US home prices rose more than expected on a monthly basis at the beginning of the spring buying season, data released on Tuesday showed.

Both the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller indexes and the FHFA gauge posted solid MoM increases in April from March. For the second consecutive month, all 20 major cities notched gains, according to Case-Shiller’s figures.

The 0.7% MoM gain for FHFA prices was the fourth consecutive and easily beat estimates. No economist forecast a gain larger than 0.5%.

“US house prices generally increased moderately in April,” Nataliya Polkovnichenko, Supervisory Economist in FHFA’s research division said.

Notably, FHFA prices rose on a YoY basis too — by 3.1%, and by twice that in the East South Central division. Prices out West fell 3.8% in April compared to the same month a year ago, consistent with large home equity declines in pricey Western locales.

The MoM gain on the Case-Shiller 20-city gauge was 0.91%, more than double March’s monthly increase. Prices fell on a YoY basis, but not by as much as economists expected. The 1.7% decline was the largest in over a decade, but compared favorably to consensus calls for a 2.5% drop.

The national gauge posted a minuscule YoY decline, and rose more than half a percent from March, an acceleration in the monthly rate of appreciation.

“The ongoing recovery in home prices is broad-based,” Craig Lazzara, managing director at S&P Dow Jones Indices, said Tuesday.

I’ll restate my cautious assessment which is all too familiar to regular readers: It’s not obvious that a “broad-based” recovery in home prices is what the Fed needs at this juncture. Ideally, new construction will continue to backfill the supply shortage left by a dearth of resale properties, while simultaneously removing the GDP drag from lackluster residential investment. That’s a win-win.

A lose-lose is a resumption of bidding wars for scarce existing homes which spills over into broader pricing dynamics, rekindling the wealth effect and compelling the Fed to keep rates higher for longer, complicating the affordability calculus further for families already struggling to make the math work.