NEW YORK CITY-All three composites measured in the S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Indices showed double-digit annual increases for the first three months of 2013, S&P Dow Jones Indices said Tuesday. Additionally, all 20 cities in the 20-City Composite posted year-over-year growth, led by Phoenix at 22.5%, and 15 of them showed price increases from the month prior.

For the first quarter, prices measured by the 10-City Composite rose by 10.3% YOY, while the 20-City City Composite saw a 10.9% gain. For the national composite, the YOY increase was 10.2%.

In a release, David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices, notes that recent housing market data from other sources confirms the trends. “Housing starts and permits, sales of new homes and those of existing homes continue to trend higher,” Blitzer says. “At the same time, the larger than usual share of multifamily housing, a large number of homes still in some stage of foreclosure and buying-to-rent by investors suggest that the housing recovery is not complete.”

Phoenix's front-running YOY price increases were followed by San Francisco with 22.2% and Las Vegas with 20.6%, according to S&P Dow Jones Indices. Miami and Tampa showed annual gains of 10.7% and 11.8%, respectively. The two Florida metro areas were joined by Atlanta, Detroit, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Portland, San Diego, and Seattle in posting gains between 10% and 20%.

“The weakest annual price gains were seen in New York (+2.6%), Cleveland (+4.8%) and Boston (+6.7%); even these numbers are quite substantial,” Blitzer says. In terms of monthly increases, Charlotte, Los Angeles, Portland, Seattle and Tampa all recorded their largest month-over-month gains in more than seven years.

Commenting on the latest Case-Shiller results, IHS Global Insights' Patrick Newport and Stephanie Karol note that “higher home prices are not a bad thing” at this point in the business cycle. For one thing, “Rising home prices are setting the stage for a pickup in economic growth,” write the two US economists for IHS.

They note that household real estate wealth increased by $1.4 trillion in 2012, according to the Federal Reserve's Flow of Funds report, marking “a plus for consumer spending. Higher home prices lifted more than 1.7 million homeowners above the waterline in 2012, according to CoreLogic—a plus for both these homeowners and their creditors. Higher home prices are boosting property tax receipts—a plus for strapped state and local governments.” Finally, Newport and Karol write, “Higher home prices are making it more profitable again to build homes—a plus for homebuilders, construction workers and furniture and appliance makers.”