House prices rose nationwide in August, up 1.5 percent from the previous month, according to the latest Federal Housing Finance Agency House Price Index (FHFA HPI®). House prices rose 8.0 percent from August 2019 to August 2020. FHFA also revised its previously reported 1.0 percent price change for July 2020 to 1.1 percent.
For the nine census divisions, seasonally adjusted monthly house price changes from July 2020 to August 2020 ranged from +0.9 percentin the East South Central division to +1.9 percent in the West South Central division. The 12-month changes ranged from +7.2 percent in the West North Central division to +9.7 percent in the Mountain division.
“U.S. house prices posted a strong increase in August,” said Dr. Lynn Fisher, FHFA’s Deputy Director of the Division of Research and Statistics. “Between July and August 2020, national prices increased by 1.5 percent, which represents the largest one-month price increase observed since the start of the index in 1991. This large month-over-month gain contributes to an already strong increase in prices over the summer. These price gains can be attributed to the historically low interest rate environment, rebounding housing demand, and continued supply constraints.”
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 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 November 24 with data for the third quarter of 2020 and monthly data through September 2020.
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