a Changes in the consumer price index.

As a result, the CPI is jokingly called the pork price index.

High and rapidly rising home prices tend to stimulate new housing supply, which in turn tends to undermine prices.

Higher home prices in a given country may tend to create conditions for falling home prices there in the future.

Before the real estate boom of the late 1970 s, hardly anyone was worried about rising home prices.

A stock index or stock market index is a measurement of the value of a section of the stock market.

Cheap loans encouraged people to buy more and bigger homes.

The fall in house prices pushed down sales of both new and existing homes. That, in turn, caused a dramatic decline in the volume of housing starts and housing construction.

All of this may have caused a temporary improvement in house prices. In short, we will have to wait for the data on house prices in June and July to know whether there has been a permanent turnaround.

In fashionable African cities, residential home prices remain stratospheric.

With higher interest rates depressing housing prices, the game is over.

But declines in home prices will not occur quickly when central banks begin to raise interest rates.

All of this may have caused a temporary improvement in house prices.

The prices of traded mortgage backed securities have followed house prices down.

But, of course, housing prices can only rise so fast.

The rise in house prices has begun to stabilize, and the impact of the rise in commodity prices is tapering off.

The other broad components of the consumer price index have increased in recent months, and the consumer price index is up about two percentage points over the past 12 months.

And, in key markets around the US, four years into the housing slump, home prices continue to fall.

In short, we will have to wait for the data on house prices in June and July to know whether there has been a permanent turnaround.

Shortages of construction materials do not seem to be a reason to expect high home prices, either.

Housing prices peaked in 2006, and equity prices peaked in 2007.

But, the truth may be just the opposite. Higher home prices in a given country may tend to create conditions for falling home prices there in the future.

This should put a break on long run escalation of home prices.

But home prices since then have been flat and show no visible trend.

Yet we have seen major changes recently in homeowners insurance rates.

Rising house prices gave people the illusion that increasing wealth backed their borrowing.

Indeed, China s housing prices have been skyrocketing in recent months.

Housing prices have also soared in most major cities.

The fall in house prices also led to a sharp rise in mortgage defaults and foreclosures, which has increased the supply of homes on the market and caused house prices to fall further.

As the flow of funds from the world to US homeowners was disrupted, house prices collapsed by 30 , and construction of new homes by more than 70 .

Rising house prices also allowed homeowners to refinance their mortgages, obtaining additional cash to spend on other things.

And even the former borrowers are unlikely to use their stimulus money to pay for more housing they have soured on the dreams that housing held out.

After two years of rate increases, Australia's home price boom only recently shows signs of abating.

During the past five years, the consumer price index has increased at an annual rate of just 1.5 .

That bubble has burst.

Of course, it works only as long as housing prices rise.

Some will then try to sell their overpriced homes, and the resulting market imbalance will cause prices to fall.

With over 80 home ownership, the epic boom in housing prices of the last ten years has spread deep into the American middle class.

Such thinking may be playing a part in the recent rebound of home prices.

We cannot be sure about how much further house prices will fall.

Some recent data suggest that the decline in house prices may be coming to an end.

Many countries are seeing vigorous growth in prices for housing, commercial real estate, or both.

But the dependence of the whole structure on continually rising house prices was rarely made explicit.

In China, food prices account for about a third of the CPI basket, with the price of pork bearing a large weight.

The stock market dropped sharply. Home prices fell 40 , completely wiping out the equity of one third of all homeowners with mortgages.