House prices rose nationwide in April, up 1.6 percent from the previous month, according to the latest Federal Housing Finance Agency House Price Index (FHFA HPI®). House prices rose 18.8 percent from April 2021 to April 2022. The previously reported 1.5 percent price change for March 2022 was revised upward to 1.6 percent.
For the nine census divisions, seasonally adjusted monthly house price changes from March 2022 to April 2022 ranged from +0.3 percentin the East South Central division to +2.5 percent in the West South Central division. The 12-month changes were all positive, ranging from +14.1 percent in the Middle Atlantic division to +23.5 percent in the South Atlantic division.
“House price appreciation continues to remain elevated in April,” said Will Doerner, Ph.D., Supervisory Economist in FHFA’s Division of Research and Statistics. “The inventory of homes on the market remains low, which has continued to keep upward pressure on sales prices. Increasing mortgage rates have yet to offset demand enough to deter the strong price gains happening across the country.”
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 July 26, 2022, with monthly data through May 2022.