U.S. house prices rose 6.5 percent between the fourth quarter of 2022 and the fourth quarter of 2023, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) House Price Index (FHFA HPI®). House prices were up 1.5 percent compared to the third quarter of 2023. FHFA’s seasonally adjusted monthly index for December was up 0.1 percent from November.
“U.S. house prices increased modestly over the course of 2023,” said Dr. Anju Vajja, Acting Deputy Director for FHFA’s Division of Research and Statistics. “However, the market showed signs of softening as house price appreciation was lower in the fourth quarter of the year than in the previous quarter.”
View a highlights video at https://youtu.be/Vrg19RnV2R4.
Significant Findings
- Nationally, the U.S. housing market has experienced positive annual appreciation each quarter since the start of 2012.
- House prices rose in 49 states between the fourth quarter of 2022 and the fourth quarter of 2023. The five states with the highest annual appreciation were 1) Rhode Island, 15.1 percent; 2) Vermont, 13.3 percent; 3) West Virginia, 12.4 percent; 4) Connecticut, 12.2 percent; and 5) New Jersey, 11.4 percent. The two areas with annual price depreciation were 1) Hawaii, -3.4 percent; and 2) District of Columbia, -1.2 percent.
- House prices rose in 96 of the top 100 largest metropolitan areas over the last four quarters. The annual price increase was the greatest in Miami-Miami Beach-Kendall, FL (MSAD) at 13.8 percent. The metropolitan area that experienced the most significant price decline was Urban Honolulu, HI at -12.9% percent.
- All nine census divisions had positive house price changes year-over-year. The New England division recorded the strongest appreciation, posting a 10.3 percent increase from the fourth quarter of 2022 to the fourth quarter of 2023. The West South Central division recorded the smallest four-quarter appreciation, at 3.2 percent.
- Trends in the Top 100 Metropolitan Statistical Areas are available in our interactive dashboard: https://www.fhfa.gov/DataTools/Tools/Pages/FHFA-HPI-Top-100-Metro-Area-Rankings.aspx. The first tab displays rankings while the second tab offers charts.
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 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 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.
Tables and graphs showing home price statistics for metropolitan areas, states, census divisions, and the United States are included on the following pages.
Notes
- FHFA will release the next monthly HPI report (including data through January 2024) on March 26, 2024 and the next quarterly report (including data for the first quarter of 2024 and monthly data for March 2024) on May 28, 2024.
- With this release, FHFA began using updated county recorder data from a licensed data vendor for estimation of the expanded-data index. FHFA will publish a technical note with more information in the next monthly report.
- FHFA posts release dates for all of 2024 at https://www.fhfa.gov/DataTools/Downloads/Pages/House-Price-Index.aspx#ReleaseDates.
- Follow @FHFA on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube for more HPI news.