Lender Processing Services Inc. (LPS) has announced that Moody's Analytics will begin offering LPS' Home Price Index (HPI), which shows historical price trends for residential properties in the U.S. Moody's Analytics will offer the LPS HPI through its data delivery platform, DataBuffet, to clients who depend on or are exposed to housing markets, such as lenders, commercial banks, residential mortgage-backed security (RMBS) market participants, insurance firms and government institutions.
"We are excited to work with Moody's Analytics to bring a new and progressive product to capital markets professionals and investors who need it, especially in today's volatile market," said Kyle Lundstedt, managing director of LPS Applied Analytics. "Moody's Analytics is known and respected for providing trusted guidance, and LPS is confident our home price index can add value with a solution that brings increased accuracy, coverage and timely information to the industry."
LPS' data provides comprehensive coverage for approximately 75 percent of U.S. properties, and the LPS HPI provides prices for 98 percent of these at the ZIP code level. There are no gaps in historical data for this broad geographic coverage.
The LPS HPI comprises prices for more than 13,500 ZIP codes nationwide, including many in non-disclosure states. Within each ZIP code, the LPS HPI explicitly provides five price levels to show the varied price histories of entry-level homes, high-end homes and homes priced in the middle of the market.
The LPS HPI tracks real estate-owned (REO) discounts down to the ZIP code level. These are used in the HPI analysis to correct for distortions that otherwise occur when REO sales are included in price-data analyses. More importantly, the LPS HPI reports these discounts to support better estimates of sales prices on REO properties. The LPS HPI can also help market participants determine the impact REO sales have on individual markets, allowing non-distressed and distressed property values to be estimated.
"The LPS HPI is a strong addition to our comprehensive repository of data on the U.S. housing market. Housing is a key component of the U.S. economy and, in this fast-changing environment, having a house price index that is updated frequently and has broad coverage is very important," said Karl Zandi, managing director of data services at Moody's Analytics.
The LPS HPI reports historical price trends for residential properties across the U.S. and provides accurate estimates of their values. Updated monthly from LPS' own SiteX real estate data and McDash loan data, the LPS HPI takes advantage of this proprietary data to show trends in the housing market up to two months before other indices.
