U.S. house prices rose in November, up 0.2 percent from the previous month, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) House Price Index (HPI). House prices rose 4.9 percent from November 2018 to November 2019. The previously reported 0.2 percent increase for October 2019 was revised upward to 0.4 percent.
For the nine census divisions, seasonally adjusted monthly house price changes from October 2019 to November 2019 ranged from -0.1 percent in the Mountain division to +0.8 percent in the East North Central division. The 12-month changes were all positive, ranging from +3.8 percent in the New England and the West South Central divisions to +6.3 percent in the Mountain division.
FHFA produces the nation’s only public, freely available house price indexes (HPIs) that measure changes in single-family house prices based on data that cover all 50 states and over 400 American cities and extend back to the mid-1970s. The HPIs are built on tens of millions of home sales and offer insights about house price fluctuations at the national, census division, state, metro area, county, ZIP code, and census tract levels. The FHFA HPIs use a fully transparent methodology based upon a weighted, repeat-sales statistical technique to analyze transaction data from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. FHFA releases data and reports on a quarterly and monthly basis. The flagship FHFA HPI uses seasonally adjusted, purchase-only data, unless otherwise noted. Additional indexes are based on other data including refinances, FHA mortgages, and real property records. All the indexes can be downloaded from the FHFA website.
Monthly index values and appreciation rate estimates for recent periods are provided in the tables and graphs on the following pages. Downloadable data and HPI release dates for all of 2020 are available here: https://www.fhfa.gov/HPI.
For detailed information on the FHFA HPI, see HPI Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). The next HPI report will be released February 25, 2020 and will include data for the fourth quarter of 2019 and monthly data through December 2019.