House prices rose nationwide in October, up 1.5 percent from the previous month, according to the latest Federal Housing Finance Agency House Price Index (FHFA HPI®). House prices rose 10.2 percent from October 2019 to October 2020. The previously reported 1.7 percent price change for September 2020 remained unchanged.
For the nine census divisions, seasonally adjusted monthly house price changes from September 2020 to October 2020 ranged from +0.9percent in the West North Central and East South Central divisions to +2.1 percent in the New England division. The 12-month changes ranged from +8.4 percent in the West South Central division to +12.5 percent in the Mountain and New England divisions.
“U.S. house prices rose for the fifth straight month since states re-opened their local economies,” said Dr. Lynn Fisher, FHFA’s Deputy Director of the Division of Research and Statistics. “The 12-month gain of 10.2 percent in October is the highest annual appreciation observed since the 2004-2005 period. Extremely low mortgage rates and a limited supply of homes for sale continue to propel price gains. The data do not yet reflect renewals of some local and state COVID-19 restrictions.”
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 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 January 26, 2021 with monthly data through November 2020.