U.S. house prices rose 6.6 percent between the first quarter of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) House Price Index (FHFA HPI®). House prices were up 1.1 percent compared to the fourth quarter of 2023. FHFA’s seasonally adjusted monthly index for March was up 0.1 percent from February.
“U.S. house prices continued to grow at a steady pace in the first quarter,” said Dr. Anju Vajja, Deputy Director for FHFA’s Division of Research and Statistics. “Over the last six consecutive quarters, the low inventory of homes for sale continued to contribute to house price appreciation despite mortgage rates that hovered around 7 percent.”
View a highlights video at https://youtu.be/8C4Hf3dGAwA.
Significant Findings
- Nationally, the U.S. housing market has experienced positive annual appreciation each quarter since the start of 2012.
- House prices rose in 50 states between the first quarter of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024. The five states with the highest annual appreciation were 1) Vermont, 12.8 percent; 2) New Jersey, 11.6 percent; 3) New York, 10.9 percent; 4) Delaware, 10.7 percent; and 5) Wisconsin, 9.9 percent. District of Columbia had a decline of -1.5 percent.
- House prices rose in 97 of the top 100 largest metropolitan areas over the last four quarters. The annual price increase was the greatest in Allentown-Bethlehem-Easton, PA-NJ at 16.0 percent. The metropolitan area that experienced the most significant price decline was Urban Honolulu, HI at -3.2 percent.
- All nine census divisions had positive house price changes year-over-year. The Middle Atlantic division recorded the strongest appreciation, posting a 9.9 percent increase from the first quarter of 2023 to the first quarter of 2024. The West South Central division recorded the smallest four-quarter appreciation, at 3.7 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, and 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 April 2024) on June 25, 2024 and the next quarterly report (including data for the second quarter of 2024 and monthly data for June 2024) on August 27, 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 the remainder of 2024 at https://www.fhfa.gov/DataTools/Downloads/Pages/House-Price-Index.aspx#ReleaseDates.
- Follow @FHFA on X, LinkedIn, Facebook, and YouTube for more HPI news.