South Florida home prices up 16.5 percent in January from year earlier, Case-Shiller says.

Home prices in South Florida rose 16.5 percent in January from a year earlier, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices.

The year-over-year price gain for the Miami area beat the 13.5 percent increase for a 10-city composite tracked by Case-Shiller.The South Florida area — which comprises Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach counties — was one of only seven metropolitan areas to show price gains from December 2013 and January 2014, the closely watched Case-Shiller report showed.

The month-to-month gain in Miami was 0.7 percent, the second biggest increase after top-performing Las Vegas, where prices ticked up 1.1 percent in January from the prior month.South Florida home prices are now at their highest level since August 2008, the index shows.

Nationwide home prices slowed for the third month in a row in January, hurt by severe winter weather. “The housing recovery may have taken a breather due to the cold weather,’’ David M. Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P Dow Jones, Indices said in a statement.

BY MARTHA BRANNIGAN, Miami Herald, March 25, 2014

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