Don’t look now, but America’s housing wealth declined a third straight month in inflation-adjusted terms.

That’s according to the latest read on the country’s marquee measures of home price growth, updated for August on Tuesday. (Remember: The Case-Shiller indexes are released on a two-month delay.)

The 20-city gauge rose just 1.6% YoY in August, the slowest since July of 2023. When you net out the annual rate of headline CPI, you end up with -1.3%.

As the figure shows, August marked the third consecutive month during which annual inflation outstripped home price gains on the most widely-cited metric.

Over the summer, S&P Dow Jones’s head of FICC Nicholas Godec described that as a “decisive shift.” Commenting Tuesday, he noted that the annual gain on the broader, national gauge of property prices has undershot annual inflation for four straight months. “Homeowners are seeing their real wealth decline even as nominal prices inch higher,” he remarked.

A quick look at the breakdown shows the Rust Belt continued to outperform. That’s a catch-up trade from the pandemic boom when some of those Midwest markets missed out on the bonanza.

Godec’s 30,000-foot assessment of the market was spot-on, which is to say he concisely captured the sense of paralysis. “With price growth running at half the rate of inflation and several major markets in decline, the rapid appreciation of recent years has clearly ended,” he said. “This adjustment may ultimately lead to a more sustainable market, but for now, homeowners are watching their real equity erode while buyers face the dual challenge of elevated prices and high borrowing costs.”