WASHINGTON, D.C. – House prices rose nationwide in May, up 1.7% from the previous month, according to the latest Federal Housing Finance Agency House Price Index (FHFA HPI). House prices rose 18% from May 2020 to May 2021. The previously reported 1.8% price change for April 2021 was unrevised.
The 12-month changes ranged from +15.4% in the West South Central division (which encompasses Oklahoma Arkansas, Texas, and Louisiana) to 16% in the West North Central division (which includes Kansas and Missouri) to +23.2% in the Mountain division (which includes New Mexico and Colorado).
For the nine census divisions, seasonally adjusted monthly house price changes from April to May 2021 ranged from +1% in the Middle Atlantic division to +2.4% in the Pacific division.
“House prices continued their record-setting growth into May,” said Dr. Lynn Fisher, FHFA’s deputy director of the Division of Research and Statistics. “This trend will likely continue around the country as busy summer home-buying months maintain the pressure being felt in already tight housing markets.”
The FHFA HPI is the nation’s only collection of public, freely available house price indexes that measures changes in single-family home values based on data from all 50 states and more than 400 American cities that extend back to the mid-1970s.
The FHFA HPI incorporates tens of millions of home sales and offers insights about house price fluctuations at the national, census division, state, metro area, county, ZIP code, and census tract levels. FHFA uses a fully transparent methodology based upon a weighted, repeat-sales statistical technique to analyze house price transaction data.
FHFA releases HPI data and reports on a quarterly and monthly basis. The flagship FHFA HPI uses seasonally adjusted, purchase-only data from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Additional indexes use other data including refinances, FHA mortgages, and real property records. All the indexes, including their historic values, and information about future HPI release dates are available on FHFA’’s website: https://www.fhfa. gov/HPI.
FHFA will release its next HPI report on August 31, with data for the second quarter of 2021 and monthly data through June 2021.