House prices fell nationwide in August, down 0.7 percent from the previous month, according to the latest Federal Housing Finance Agency House Price Index (FHFA HPI®). House prices rose 11.9 percent from August 2021 to August 2022. The previously reported 0.6 percent price decline in July 2022 remained unchanged.
For the nine census divisions, seasonally adjusted monthly house price changes from July to August 2022 ranged from -2.0 percent in the Mountain division to +0.4 percent in the New England division. The 12-month changes were all positive, ranging from +7.4 percent in the Pacific division to +16.2 percent in the South Atlantic division.
“U.S. house prices declined in August at a similar pace to the previous month. This is the first time since March 2011 that the index has seen two consecutive months of decline.” said Will Doerner, Ph.D., Supervisory Economist in FHFA’s Division of Research and Statistics. “The recent monthly decline solidifies the deceleration of 12-month house price growth that began earlier this year. Higher mortgage rates continued to put pressure on demand, notably weakening house price growth.”
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 November 29, 2022, including data through the third quarter of 2022 and monthly data through September.