U.S. home prices fell 0.1% in January compared with December, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA) seasonally adjusted monthly home price index, which uses home price data from government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
“U.S. house prices declined slightly in January, marking the first decrease since August 2022,” says Anju Vajja, deputy director of division of research and statistics for the FHFA, in a statement. “However, the year-over-year house price growth remained near the historical average.”
The report is in contrast with yesterday’s S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller U.S. National Home Price NSA Index report, which shows that U.S. home prices increased 0.4% on an adjusted basis in January compared with December and were up 6.0% compared with January 2023.
In addition CoreLogic’s home price index, released earlier this month, shows that U.S. home prices increased 0.1% in January compared with December and were up 5.8% compared with January 2023.
Still, all three reports show that home price appreciation is slowing.
FHFA says its HPI report is a comprehensive collection of publicly available house price indexes that measure changes in single-family home values based on data that extend back to the mid-1970s from all 50 states and over 400 American cities.
It incorporates tens of millions of home sales and offers insights about house price changes at the national, census division, state, metro area, county, ZIP code, and census tract levels.
Photo: Kostiantyn Li