U.S. house prices rose 0.3 percent in August, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) seasonally adjusted monthly House Price Index (HPI®). House prices rose 4.2 percent from August 2023 to August 2024. The previously reported 0.1 percent price increase in July was revised upward to 0.2 percent.
For the nine census divisions, seasonally adjusted monthly price changes from July 2024 to August 2024 ranged from -0.1 percent in the East North Central and New England divisions to +0.9 percent in the West North Central division. The 12-month changes were all positive, ranging from +2.4 percent in the West South-Central division to +6.3 percent in the East North Central division.
“House price appreciation in the United States remained modest for the sixth consecutive month,” said Dr. Anju Vajja, Deputy Director for FHFA’s Division of Research and Statistics. “The slow but continued house price growth and the effect of locked-in interest rates led to persistent housing affordability challenges.”
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, mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration, 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 November 26, 2024, and will include monthly data through September and quarterly data through the third quarter of 2024.