A piece in the NYT yesterday confirms that San Francisco is winning the race to become the most expensive place to live anywhere ever. In the ongoing, much talked about economic recovery, home prices in the city have posted a 20% gain over last year, and showed the overall highest month-over-month rise between February and March, of 3.9%

This is all via the well regarded Standard & Poor's/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, which tracks home sales in 20 big cities across the country. San Francisco, along with places whose real estate markets were really hard hit by the recession like Las Vegas and Phoenix, has shown the strongest gains in the twelve months ending in March 2013. Economists don't think this is a bubble just yet, in large part because credit is still not that easy to get.

Home prices here are still about 30% below what they were at the market peak in 2006, but they're rapidly gaining back the value they lost, probably due to dwindling supply and increasing demand. The overall composite index for all twenty cities was up about 11% over last year. And even in huge markets like L.A. and New York, where the housing comes in a much larger range of prices, values have gone up steadily, with L.A. posting a 16.6% gain since last year, and New York posting a significant 2.6% gain. Check out this interactive chart for comparison.

Coupled with the crazy insane rental market in the city, we are well on track to become — if we haven't already — the least affordable city in the country, whether you're trying to own or rent. But you knew that already.

[NYT]