Home Prices Up — Can This Be Real?
Bet you haven’t heard this in awhile — U.S. home prices rose. They rose for the month of April by .9 percent nationwide according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s monthly House Price Index (HPI).
Let’s not go crazy here, the index is 10.7 percent below its April 2007 peak. That said, in an environment with lousy news followed by worse news, the latest HPI is decidely in the good-news column.
The FHFA data comes from the purchase prices of houses used to back mortgages which have been sold or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Between them, the two companies hold more than 31 million loans.
The problem is that the higher April prices did not happen everywhere. There were significant differences in the nine regions tracked by the government — some of which are surprising. The regional results for April are below:
Pacific Census Division: Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California — up +2.7 percent.
Mountain Census Division: Montana, Idaho,
Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, New Mexico — -0.2 percent.
West North Central: North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Nebraska, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri — up +0.6 percent.
West South Central: Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana — up +0.5 percent.
East North Central: Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Ohio — up +1.5 percent.
East South Central: Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama — down -0.5 percent.
New England: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut — down -2.0 percent.
Middle Atlantic: New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania — down -0.1 percent.
South Atlantic: Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida — up +1.4 percent.
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