Standard & Poor’s reported that the Case Shiller 20-City Home Price Index rose in December, up 0.2 percent from November, and the index moved 0.9 percent higher after seasonal adjustments as shown below.

While seasonality is certainly making the data more difficult to interpret, there is no question that home prices continue to rise at a steady pace, though it’s worth pointing out that the slope of the year-over-year curves above was much steeper when moving up from the early-2009 bottom.

In December, the annual price change of the 20-city index reached a new recovery high of 6.8 percent, still a few percentage points back of other more timely home price gauges as buyers continue to flock to areas that were once housing bubble hot-spots. Las Vegas and Los Angeles saw the biggest price gains for the month, up 1.8 percent and 1.1 percent, respectively.