Upward momentum in U.S. house prices remained strong in the second quarter, as prices rose 2.1 percent from the previous quarter, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) House Price Index (HPI). This is the eighth consecutive quarterly price increase in the purchase-only, seasonally adjusted index.
“The housing market experienced one of its strongest quarters since the boom in the middle of the last decade,” said FHFA Principal Economist Andrew Leventis. The HPI is calculated using home sales price information from mortgages sold to or guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Compared with last year, house prices rose 7.2 percent from the second quarter of 2012 to the second quarter of 2013. FHFA’s seasonally adjusted monthly index for June was up 0.7 percent from May.
FHFA’s expanded-data house price index, a metric introduced in August 2011 that adds transaction information from county recorder offices and the Federal Housing Administration to the HPI data sample, rose 2.4 percent over the latest quarter. Over the last four quarters, that index is up 7.5 percent. For individual states, price changes reflected in the expanded-data measure and the traditional purchase-only HPI are compared on pages 31-33 of this report. The seasonally adjusted, purchase-only HPI rose 7.2 percent from the second quarter of 2012 to the second quarter of 2013 while prices of other goods and services rose only 1.0 percent. The inflation-adjusted price of homes rose approximately 6.2 percent over the latest year.
Significant Findings:
►The seasonally adjusted purchase-only HPI rose in 47 states and in the District of Columbia during the second quarter. Top five in annual appreciation: 1) Nevada 2) California 3) Arizona
4) Oregon and 5) District of Columbia.
►Of the nine census divisions, the Pacific division experienced the strongest increase in the latest quarter, posting a 4.6 percent increase and a 16.2 percent increase since last year. House prices were weakest in the East South Central division, where prices increased 0.9 percent from the prior quarter.
►As measured with purchase-only indexes for the 100 most populated metropolitan areas in the U.S., second quarter price increases were greatest in the Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford, FL Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA) where prices increased by 10.0 percent. Prices were weakest in the Akron, OH MSA, where they fell 3.9 percent over that period.
►The monthly seasonally adjusted purchase-only index for the U.S. has increased for the last 17 consecutive months.
FHFA’s “distress-free” house price indexes, which were published for 12 large metropolitan areas on page 47, generally report lower quarterly appreciation than FHFA’s traditional purchase-only indexes. In eight of the 12 areas covered, the new series—which removes short sales and sales of bank-owned properties—shows lower quarterly appreciation than the purchase-only series.
