House prices rose nationwide in October, up 1.1 percent from the previous month, according to the latest Federal Housing Finance Agency House Price Index (FHFA HPI®). House prices rose 17.4 percent from October 2020 to October 2021. The previously reported 0.9 percent price change for September 2021 remained unchanged.
For the nine census divisions, seasonally adjusted monthly house price changes from September 2021 to October 2021 ranged from –0.3 percent in the New England division to +1.7 percent in the East South Central division. The 12-month changes ranged from +13.2 percent in the West North Central division to +23.2 percent in the Mountain division.
“House price levels continue to rise but the rapid pace is curtailing through October,” said Will Doerner, Ph.D., Supervisory Economist in FHFA’s Division of Research and Statistics. “The large market appreciations seen this spring peaked in July and have been cooling this fall with annual trends slowing over the last four consecutive months.”
The FHFA HPI is the nation’s only collection of public, freely available house price indexes that measure changes in single-family home values based on data from all 50 states and over 400 American cities that extend back to the mid-1970s. The FHFA HPI incorporates tens of millions of home sales and offers insights about house price fluctuations at the national, census division, state, metro area, county, ZIP code, and census tract levels. FHFA uses a fully transparent methodology based upon a weighted, repeat-sales statistical technique to analyze house price transaction data.
FHFA releases HPI data and reports on a quarterly and monthly basis. The flagship FHFA HPI uses nominal, seasonally adjusted, purchase-only data from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Additional indexes use other data including refinances, FHA mortgages, and real property records. All the indexes, including their historic values, and information about future HPI release dates are available on FHFA’s website: https://www.fhfa.gov/HPI.
FHFA will release its next HPI report on January 25, 2022, with monthly data through November 2021.