Your home price is out-pacing the nation’s (if you’re average)

Current prices:

— 6 percent below peak

— 55 percent above bottom

Source: S&P/Case Shiller Home Price Index

With a shortage of homes for sale besetting the market – but nudging up prices – Atlanta’s home prices were up an average of 6.5 percent during the past year, according to a much-watched national survey released this morning.

Atlanta’s price hike was better than the 5.4 percent rise for the nation’s top 20 metro areas, according to the S&P/Case-Shiller House Price Index, a calculation based on a three-month average.

“The economy is supporting the price increases with improving labor markets, falling unemployment rates and extremely low mortgage rates,” said David Blitzer, chairman of the index committee at S&P Dow Jones Indices.

Atlanta’s home prices on average are still 6 percent below their housing bubble peaks. But they have risen 55 percent since bottoming out four years ago, according to Case Shiller.

All 20 metros saw price increases during the year, but the range among them was dramatic. The fastest-rising prices were in Portland, where home prices have jumped 12.3 percent on average from a year ago, according to Case Shiller. The slowest were in Washington, D.C., where prices edged up just 1.3 percent the past year.

Atlanta prices rose 1.1 percent for the month, tying the region for sixth-fastest increase among the top regions.

During the month, Seattle scored highest, with prices rising 2.4 percent, according to Case Shiller.

Fastest growing prices were in Portland, Seattle and Denver, where the job market has – not coincidentally – be very strong, said Blitzer. “These cities also saw some of the largest declines in unemployment rates among the 20 cities included in the S&P/Case-Shiller Indices.”

Other reports show homes for sale in metro Atlanta have for several years been equal to just a few months of sales, roughly half of what a balanced market looks like. Strengthening demand and short supply is a formula for higher prices.

Supply is a problem across the country, not just in metro Atlanta, according to Case Shiller: Nationally, the number of homes on the market represents less than 2 percent of the number of households. That is the lowest such share since the mid-1980s, according to Blitzer.

“It remains a tough home buying season for buyers, with little inventory available among lower-priced homes,” said Svenja Gudell, chief economist for Zillow, a Seattle-based real estate research company. “The competition is locking out some first-time buyers, who instead are paying record-high rents.”