New U.S. Monthly House Price Index Estimates 0.6 Percent Price Increase Between January and February

April 22, 2008 – WASHINGTON, DC – U.S. home prices rose approximately 0.6 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis between January and February, according to Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight’s (OFHEO) new monthly House Price Index. For the 12 months ending in February, U.S. prices fell 2.4 percent. Since its peak in April 2007, the index is down 3.1 percent. While the South Atlantic Region is down slightly, Palm Coast shows some strength. See related stories.

 

The OFHEO monthly index is calculated using purchase prices of houses backing mortgages that have been sold to or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. The index, introduced in OFHEO’s fourth quarter 2007 House Price Index (HPI) report, provides a timely indicator of house price conditions for the nation and each of the nine Census Divisions. For the nine Census Divisions, seasonally-adjusted monthly price changes from January to February ranged from -0.6 percent in the Mountain Census Division to 2.2 percent in the New England Division.

 

Changes in the national index, which is constructed as a weighted average of data from the nine Census Divisions, reflect movements in market prices as well as changes in the mix of geographic areas within Census Divisions. Normally changes in the mix are relatively small. However, in February, the share of reported sales volumes rose in states with stronger housing markets, which significantly increased estimated appreciation above what it would have been in the absence of such effects. Holding the weights for each state constant, the national increase would have been only 0.3 percent in February.

 

Monthly index values and appreciation rate estimates are provided in the table and graph on the following pages. All estimates are seasonally adjusted and, as with OFHEO’s quarterly HPI, will be revised in later releases. As indicated in OFHEO’s fourth quarter 2007 HPI report, quarterly HPI releases will include updated monthly data presented in the same format as the attached table.

 

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