Home prices continue to go up, seemingly immune to the pandemic. The FHFA index tracks all U.S. home prices mortgages held by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

WASHINGTON – U.S. house prices rose in April, up 0.2% month-to-month, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) House Price Index (HPI), and up 5.5% year-to-year.

The month-to-month increase was greater in April than it was the month before. In March, prices rose 0.1%.

“Regionally, results varied,” says Dr. Lynn Fisher, deputy director of the Division of Research and Statistics at FHFA. “Two of the usually stronger growth areas, the Mountain and Pacific divisions, were flat over the month, but other divisions continued to experience strong price appreciation even with all of the COVID-19 challenges.”

Fisher says that while the New England and South Atlantic regions saw monthly price decreases, all divisions posted positive year-to-year growth of at least 5%.

“The number of transactions used to estimate the HPI were slightly down from March to April but were still a robust sample,” she adds. “We expect the normal spring bump in sales was pushed off by the COVID-19 shutdowns and may extend into the summer months as states reopen and real estate sales pick back up.”

For the nine census divisions, seasonally adjusted monthly house price changes from March 2020 to April 2020 ranged from -0.5% in the South Atlantic division to +0.8% in the West South Central division. The 12-month changes were all positive, ranging from +5.0% in the Middle Atlantic division to +6.8% in the Mountain division.

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