U.S. house prices rose 0.1 percent in July, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) seasonally adjusted monthly House Price Index (HPI®). House prices rose 4.5 percent from July 2023 to July 2024. The previously reported 0.1 percent price decrease in June was revised upward to 0.0 percent.
For the nine census divisions, seasonally adjusted monthly price changes from June 2024 to July 2024 ranged from -0.7 percent in the South Atlantic division to +0.9 percent in the East North Central and New England divisions. The 12-month changes were all positive, ranging from +1.6 percent in the West South Central division to +7.5 percent in the East North Central division.
“For the third consecutive month U.S. house prices showed little movement,” said Dr. Anju Vajja, Deputy Director for FHFA’s Division of Research and Statistics. “Gradually declining mortgage rates and relatively flat house prices may improve housing affordability.”
The FHFA HPI is a comprehensive collection of publicly available house price indexes that measure changes in single-family home values based on data that extend back to the mid-1970s from all 50 states and over 400 American cities. It incorporates tens of millions of home sales and offers insights about house price changes 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 quarterly and monthly. The flagship FHFA HPI uses seasonally adjusted, purchase-only data from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Additional indexes use other data, including refinances, Federal Housing Administration 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.
The next HPI report will be released October 29, 2024, and will include monthly data through August 2024.