Home price appreciation continued to flatten in October, rising only 0.1% compared to September, according to Lender Processing Services' (LPS) monthly First Look mortgage report.
The average price of a home in the U.S. remained unchanged at $232,000. Although this represents an 8.8% increase over the average price of $213,000 recorded in October 2012 and about 8.2% higher than the average price of $214,000 recorded in December 2012, it is nevertheless down about 14% compared to the average home price peak of $270,000 recorded in June 2006.
LPS' data indicates that home appreciation is slowing across the country. Most of the larger states, for example, saw little change in average home price for October, compared to September. Home price appreciation was relatively flat in California (-0.1%), Florida (0.3%), New Jersey (0.3%) and Texas (0.0%).
States that saw the largest degree of home price appreciation were Rhode Island (0.8%), Massachusetts (0.7%), Georgia (0.7%), New York (0.7%) and Florida (0.3%).
Metropolitan areas that saw the largest degree of price appreciation were Boston (0.9%); Miami (0.9%); Atlanta (0.8%); Provo, Utah (0.8%); and Cape Coral, Fla. (0.7%).
A recent report from the Federal Housing Finance Administration (FHFA) also shows that home price appreciation flattened in October.
According to the FHFA's monthly House Price Index (HPI), home prices rose 0.5%, on a seasonally adjusted basis, compared to the previous month.
October was the 21st consecutive month that home prices increased in the FHFA's purchase-only, seasonally adjusted index, which is calculated using home sales price information from mortgages either sold to or guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The FHFA revised down its home price increase for September from 0.3% to 0.2%.
The FHFA notes that home prices were up 8.2% in October compared to October 2012.
However, home prices were an average 8.8% below their April 2007 peak, according to the report.
For the nine census divisions tracked by the FHFA's HPI, the Pacific division reported the biggest, on-average home price gain for October, rising 17.5% compared to September. The East South Central division saw home prices drop -1.0%, while the Mountain division saw prices rise 1.2%, and the East South Central division saw prices rise 4.7%.
Although they have flattened considerably, home prices are expected to continue to rise gradually through the first half of 2014. A recent report from Zillow shows that home prices increased about 0.6%, on average, in November compared to October, and were up 7.1% year-over-year. This reflects a continued slowdown from the summer selling season, when annual home value appreciation peaked at about 7.3%, according to Zillow.