House prices increased nationwide in August, up 1% from the previous month, according to the latest Federal Housing Finance Agency House Price Index (FHFA HPI).
House prices rose 18.5% from August 2020 to August 2021. The previously reported 1.4% price change for July 2021 remained unchanged.
For the nine census divisions, seasonally adjusted monthly house price changes from July 2021 to August 2021 ranged from -0.1% in the New England division to +1.9% in the South Atlantic division. The 12-month changes ranged from +14.9% in the West North Central division to +25.8% in the Mountain division.
“Annual house price gains remained extremely high in August but the pace of month-over-month gains continues to decelerate,” says Dr. Lynn Fisher, FHFA’s deputy director of the Division of Research and Statistics. “This does not mean house prices are at risk of declining – far from it, they continue to climb at a double-digit pace in all regions – but it does suggest we may have seen the peak in annual gains for the time being.”
The FHFA HPI is a collection of public, freely available house price indexes that measure changes in single-family home values based on data from all 50 states and over 400 American cities that extend back to the mid-1970s. The FHFA HPI 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 releases HPI data and reports on a quarterly and monthly basis.
The flagship FHFA HPI uses nominal, seasonally adjusted, purchase-only data from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Additional indexes use other data including refinances, FHA mortgages and real property records. FHFA will release its next HPI report on November 30, 2021 with monthly data through September 2021 and quarterly data through the third quarter of 2021.
