Seattle cranes
Cranes dot the neighborhood around Amazon’s South lake Union campus, with its Doppler and Day 1 towers and Spheres visible at top right. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)

Seattle home values continue to skyrocket, rising at a rate of more than double the national average in July.

According to the latest installment of the Case-Shiller National Home Price Index, Seattle home prices shot up 13.5 percent on a year-over-year basis. Portland saw the second fastest home price growth at 7.6 percent, according to the report. The national average for July was 5.9 percent.

Seattle has consistently been the hottest housing market in the nation over the last few years, buoyed by the city’s thriving technology industry. This summer, Zillow found that Seattle is among the cities with the highest number of $1 million neighborhoods. Seattle has 38 $1 million neighborhoods, putting it at seventh among the top 10 cities.

And while Seattle is gaining $1 million neighborhoods rapidly it is also grappling with a homeless crisis. A separate Zillow report found that Seattle has the third highest homeless population in the nation, behind only New York and Los Angeles. Seattle is one of several cities where Zillow ties rent increases to a rising homeless population.

Developers are building record numbers of apartments in the Seattle area, but it still is not enough to keep up with the demand from the constant influx of new people as well as potential buyers stuck in the rental market due to high costs. Rising home values and lack of available starter homes make it tough for younger buyers, even the techies working at Amazon and Microsoft, to get into the market.

Case-Shiller’s data shows that the biggest competition for houses over the past few years has been at the lowest price tiers. High-end housing prices have been pretty stable, while cheaper homes have been extremely volatile. However, things do appear to be leveling out somewhat, as even the low-priced homes aren’t seeing as extreme price spikes as they did back in 2013 and 2014.

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