FHFA: Housing Prices Rose 1% in Only One Month

The federal agency behind Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac says July home prices rose 1% above June home prices and 6.5% in a year-to-year comparison.

WASHINGTON, D.C. – House prices rose nationwide in July, up 1.0% from the previous month, according to the latest Federal Housing Finance Agency House Price Index (FHFA HPI).

House prices also rose 6.5% year-to-year – from July 2019 to July 2020. FHFA also revised its previously reported 0.9% price change for June 2020 to 1.0%.

Home prices rose month-to-month in all nine census divisions tracked by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) in July, ranging from 0.6% (West North Central division) to 2.0% (New England division).

The year-to-year increases ranged from a 5.4% increase (West South Central division) to 7.7% (Mountain and the East South Central divisions).

“U.S. house prices posted a strong increase in July,” says Dr. Lynn Fisher, FHFA’s deputy director of the Division of Research and Statistics. “Between May and July 2020, national prices increased by over 2%, which represents the largest two-month price increase observed since the start of the index in 1991. The dramatic increase in prices this summer can be attributed to the historically low interest rate environment and rebounding housing demand even as the supply of homes for sale remains constrained.”

The FHFA HPI is the nation’s only public, freely available house price indexes that measure changes in single-family home values based on data from all 50 states and over 400 American cities. Collection dates back to the mid-1970s. FHFA is the federal agency that oversees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which together own more than half the mortgages in the U.S.

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