Here Are 2 Critical Home Price Charts To Consider Ahead Of Today's Case-Shiller Report

At 9:00 a.m. ET, we'll get the July reading of the S&P/Case-Shiller home price index.

Economists estimate that prices climbed by 12.4% year-over-year.

Everyone will watch closely to see if rising mortgage rates had an impact on the housing market.

Last week, the Federal Reserve pointed to tightening financial conditions when it announced that it would delay the tapering of its stimulative large-scale asset purchase program.

Morgan Stanley's Matthew Hornbach thinks it could be at least a month before we hear about a tapering. And among his many reasons, Hornbach points to home prices.

"[A] factor that may cause the Fed to wait beyond the October meeting is that measures of home price appreciation (HPA) such as the S&P/Case-Shiller index shown in Exhibit 5 come out with a one-quarter lag - meaning that during the week of September 23 the data will reflect HPA for the month of July," wrote Hornbach in a note to clients on Friday. "The Fed will also get S&P/Case-Shiller home prices for August on the first day of the October 29-30 FOMC meeting. While August was the first full month after most of the mortgage rate increases had occurred, the Fed may want to see more data, given uncertain lags."

As you can see from Hornbach's chart above, the year-over-year growth rate in prices have been plateauing.

And while home price growth continues to be positive, it's important to remember that the S&P/Case-Shiller number most people reference is a composite of 20 cities, and housing is very much a local story.

"We will be paying particular attention to the breadth of price hikes in the SPCS report," said Societe Generale's Brian Jones. "While universal during the first quarter of 2013, sequential price increases were posted by 15 of the 20 cities surveyed in the June report."

Jones offers the chart to the right. As you can see, the breadth has been falling.

We will cover the Case-Shiller report live on BusinessInsider.com.