U.S. house prices rose in October, up 0.2 percent from the previous month, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) House Price Index (HPI). House prices rose 5.0 percent from October 2018 to October 2019. The previously reported 0.6 percent increase for September 2019 was revised upward to 0.7 percent.
For the nine census divisions, seasonally adjusted monthly house price changes from September 2019 to October 2019 ranged from -0.5 percent in the East North Central division to +0.7 percent in the West South Central and East South Central divisions. The 12-month changes were all positive, ranging from +3.5 percent in the New England division to +6.7 percent in the Mountain division.
FHFA produces the nation’s only public, freely available house price indexes (HPIs) that measure changes in single-family house prices based on data that cover all 50 states and over 400 American cities and extend back to the mid-1970s. The HPIs are built on tens of millions of home sales and offer insights about house price fluctuations at the national, census division, state, metro area, county, ZIP code, and census tract levels. The FHFA HPIs use a fully transparent methodology based upon a weighted, repeat-sales statistical technique to analyze transaction data from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. FHFA releases data and reports on a quarterly and monthly basis. The flagship FHFA HPI uses seasonally adjusted, purchase-only data, unless otherwise noted. Additional indexes are based on other data including refinances, FHA mortgages, and real property records. All the indexes can be downloaded from the FHFA website.
Monthly index values and appreciation rate estimates for recent periods are provided in the tables and graphs on the following pages. Downloadable data and HPI release dates for 2020 are available here: https://www.fhfa.gov/HPI.
For detailed information on the FHFA HPI, see HPI Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). The next HPI report will be released January 22, 2020 and will include monthly data through November 2019.