Commentary Home prices in the U.S. increased in value during the past year at the fastest pace since the end of the 2006 real estate bubble that led to the Great Recession. Standard & Poors (S&P) compiled an index of home prices using an analytic framework developed by economic sciences Nobel laureate Robert Shiller and data from CoreLogic. Its national real estate index, as well as indices for 20 cities, is the best set of data for comparing actual home prices through time. It compares a home’s actual sale price to the last time that individual homesold. Data for February 2021 from the S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller data released on April 27 showed that home values in the U.S. increased 12 percent over the year-ago period. Perhaps most striking about the increase is that its comparative month, February 2020, occurred one month before the pandemic hit the U.S. S&P managing director …