U.S. home prices continued to rise in April, increasing 1.5% compared to March, according to Lender Processing Services' (LPS) U.S. Home Price Index (HPI).
Year over year, home prices were 8.1% higher compared to April 2012, according to the monthly report.
The top 20 largest states experienced an increase in home prices from March to April, according to LPS.
The national average reached $217,000, up 4.5% from January. That is down about 18.2% compared to the June 2006 peak level of $265,000.Â
The West Coast saw the greatest increases overall, with home prices rising more than 2% in California, Nevada, Oregon and Washington.
LPS' HPI combines the company's extensive property and loan-level databases to produce a repeat sales analysis of home prices as of their transaction dates every month for each of more than 15,500 U.S. ZIP codes. The report represents the price of non-distressed sales by taking into account price discounts for REO and short sales.
LPS' research is supported by recent reports from CoreLogic, RealtyTrac and Zillow showing that home prices continued to rise in April and May.
