August Indexes Show Price Gains

(Image courtesy of FHFA)

The Federal Housing Finance Agency released its price index for August, showing a 0.6% month-to-month gain and a 5.6% annual gain in U.S. house prices.

“U.S. and regional house price gains remained strong over the last 12 months,” said Dr. Nataliya Polkovnichenko​, Supervisory Economist in FHFA’s Division of Research and Statistics. “The South Atlantic division showed moderate weakness in August, while the remaining Census divisions posted positive price appreciation from the previous month.”

In terms of those regions, on a month-to-month basis, the metric ranged from a 0.2% drop in the South Atlantic division to a 1.1% increase in the Pacific and East North Central divisions.

On an annual basis, it ranged from a 2.4% increase in the Mountain division to 8.6% in the Middle Atlantic region.

Meanwhile, the U.S. CoreLogic S&P Case-Shiller Index showed a non-seasonally adjusted 0.4% month-over-month increase for August, with a 2.6% annual change.

This is the second month of annual increases following two months of declines. Prices are up 6.4% from the bottom they reached in January.

The 10-city and 20-city composites were up by 3% and 2.2%, respectively, and are both up about 7% since the beginning of the year.

“Although housing prices have increased significantly this year, climbing 5% from the early-year low, higher mortgage rates and seasonal trends will slow further monthly gains–with some possible declines in winter months,” said Selma Hepp, chief economist at CoreLogic. “Nevertheless, the year-to-date gains indicate that growth will pick up through the end of 2023 compared to last year’s slump during this time period.”