House prices rose nationwide in January, up 1.6% from the previous month, according to the latest Federal Housing Finance Agency House Price Index (FHFA HPI). House prices rose 18.2% from January 2021 to January 2022. The previously reported 1.2% price change for December 2021 was revised upward to a 1.3% price change.
For the nine census divisions, seasonally adjusted monthly house price changes from December 2021 to January 2022 ranged from +0.1% in the New England division to +2.2% in the South Atlantic division. The 12-month changes ranged from +13.3% in the Middle Atlantic division to +23.1% in the Mountain division.
“House price trends notched up slightly in January,” states Will Doerner, Ph.D., supervisory economist in FHFA’s Division of Research and Statistics. “Rising mortgage rates in January certainly reflect a major change from the past several years, but lending costs remain relatively low. The mortgage rate shift has not dampened upward price pressure from intense borrower demand and limited supply.”
The FHFA HPI is a collection of public, freely available house price indexes that measures 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 uses a fully transparent methodology based upon a weighted, repeat-sales statistical technique to analyze house price transaction data.
FHFA will release its next HPI report on April 26, 2022, with monthly data through February 2022.
