U.S. house prices fell in January, down 0.1 percent from December, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) seasonally adjusted monthly House Price Index (HPI®). House prices rose 6.3 percent from January 2023 to January 2024. The previously reported 0.1 percent price increase in December remained unchanged.
For the nine census divisions, seasonally adjusted monthly price changes from December 2023 to January 2024 ranged from -0.6 percentin the South Atlantic division to +1.5 percent in the West North Central division. The 12-month changes were all positive, ranging from +3.8 percent in the West South Central division to +8.7 percent in the East North Central division.
“U.S. house prices declined slightly in January, marking the first decrease since August 2022,” said Dr. Anju Vajja, Deputy Director for FHFA’s Division of Research and Statistics. “However, the year-over-year house price growth remained near the historical average.”
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, Federal Housing Administration 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 April 30, 2024, including monthly data through February 2024.
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