House prices rose nationwide in July, up 1.4 percent from the previous month, according to the latest Federal Housing Finance Agency House Price Index (FHFA HPI®). House prices rose 19.2 percent from July 2020 to July 2021. The previously reported 1.6 percent price change for June 2021 was revised upward to 1.7 percent.
For the nine census divisions, seasonally adjusted monthly house price changes from June 2021 to July 2021 ranged from +0.8 percent in the West North Central division to +1.9 percent in the South Atlantic division. The 12-month changes ranged from +15.6 percent in the West North Central division to +25.6 percent in the Mountain division.
“Record appreciation rates for the U.S. continued in July,” said Dr. Lynn Fisher, FHFA’s Deputy Director of the Division of Research and Statistics. “Although the monthly pace of increase slowed in most Census Divisions in July, four areas experienced year over year growth rates in excess of 20 percent and all saw annual gains in excess of 15 percent.”
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 October 26, 2021 with monthly data through August 2021.