US home prices rose a fifth straight month in June, according to lagged data released on Tuesday.

This shouldn’t come as a surprise. It’s obvious by now that America’s resale inventory shortage is putting a floor under the cost of roofs, if you will.

The irony is amusing: Elevated mortgage rates are constraining demand, but that’s more than offset by what amounts to a seller’s strike among existing homeowners. The net result is new records for prices in some parts of the country.

The S&P Case-Shiller 20-city index rose 0.92% in June, and the decline from June of 2022 was less pronounced than expected at 1.2%. Economists were looking for a 1.6% YoY drop.

Note that the national price index fell just 0.02% YoY. So, prices are now basically flat versus a year ago, when they were perched at records. The national gauge rose 0.65% MoM. Every major metro market logged a MoM increase. That’s been the case for four months running.

“US home prices continued to increase,” Craig Lazzara, Managing Director at S&P Dow Jones said Tuesday. The national gauge is now just 0.02% from its all-time high, and it’s up nearly 5% so far in 2023, more than the median full-year increase looking back 35 years.

“We recognize that the market’s gains could be truncated by increases in mortgage rates or by general economic weakness, but the breadth and strength of this month’s report are consistent with an optimistic view of future results,” Lazzara went on.

I guess that depends on your perspective. If you’re trying to buy, “optimistic” probably isn’t the right word for new price records.

Meanwhile, FHFA prices rose again too, although June’s 0.3% MoM gain was just half the expected increase and matched the lowest estimate from the nine lonely economists who ventured a guess. Still, it’s a streak which, when you plug in what looked like newly-adjusted data, is now in its 10th month.

FHFA also released its quarterly report on Tuesday. Prices rose 3% between Q2 2022 and 2023, and 1.7% versus Q1 of this year.

Anju Vajja, FHFA’s principal associate director of research, cited low inventory.

“While prices in a number of western states continued to decline YoY, house prices rose in all states QoQ,” Vajja said.

This is a threat to the Fed’s inflation-fighting efforts. They’re counting on shelter disinflation. To be sure, they’re going to get it in the near-term. The price data works its way through on a lag. But that same lag may work against them later if home prices keep rising.