Tag: home appreciation

More data has been released on both home prices and home sales…and the numbers are fascinating.

The numbers are a month or two behind, due to the time it takes to gather and report the information, but the trends are clearly visible.

Home prices are continuing to appreciate, although the number of sales is declining year-over-year.

Home Prices

The National Case-Shiller Home Price Index, which is considered the “gold standard” for appreciation, showed home prices rose 2.1% in April and 20.4% year over year, which is basically flat from the previous report…but still blistering hot.

The FHFA (Federal Housing Finance Agency) released their House Price Index, which measures home price appreciation on single-family homes with conforming loan amounts.

While you can have a million-dollar home with a conforming loan amount, it’s typically measuring your mid-priced homes.

Prices rose 1.6% in April and are up 18.8% year over year, which is a slight decrease from 19.1% in the previous report, but also extremely hot.

“House price appreciation continues to remain elevated in April,” said Will Doerner, Ph.D., Supervisory Economist in FHFA’s Division of Research and Statistics.

“The inventory of homes on the market remains low, which has continued to keep upward pressure on sales prices. Increasing mortgage rates have yet to offset demand enough to deter the strong price gains happening across the country.”

Home Sales

Pending Home Sales, which measures signed contracts on existing homes, rose 0.7% in the month of May. This was much stronger than the 4% decline expected, but sales are still down 13.6% year over year.

There is no doubt that higher interest rates are impacting demand, but this report does include the majority of the rise. Additionally, the fact that sales were higher with the rise in home prices and lack of inventory clearly shows that the purchase market still remains strong.

New Home Sales, which measures signed contracts on new homes, were up 10.7% in May to a 696,000 annualized pace, which was above expectations.

The report is actually stronger than it appears as there was a positive revision to the previous month. When factoring that in, sales are up 18% from the initially reported number. Year over year sales they are down 5.9%. There were 444,000 homes for sale at the end of May, but only 37,000 or about 6% are actually completed. The rest are either not started or under construction.

The median home price remained steady at $449,000, which is up 15% year over year and points to an increase in higher priced homes sold. The Average priced home came in at $511,400, which is up 16% from last year.

In Conclusion

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New home sales, which measures signed contracts on new homes, were up 21% in March, and the February number was revised higher, as well.

Taking out the revision, sales would be up 32% from last month’s original number.

Sales are up 67% on a year over year basis, although that is a little bit skewed, due to the economy being shut down this time last year.

Looking at inventory levels – there were only 307,000 new homes for sale in March, down 7% from last year. There are 14% fewer homes for sale under $300,000 compared to last year. The Median home price was reported at $331,000 up not even 1% from last year.

Appreciation

Home prices continue to increase across the country, as the latest S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller Home Price Index report showed a 12% annual gain in February — up from 11.2% in January.

Case-Shiller Home Price Indices are the leading measures of U.S. residential real estate prices, tracking changes in the value of residential real estate nationally.

It’s the ninth straight month of increasing prices.  The 12% home price gain is the highest recorded increase in the last 15 years!

Phoenix, San Diego, and Seattle reported the highest year-over-year home price gains among the 20 cities in February, with Phoenix leading the way with a 17.4% increase from 2020. San Diego showed a 17% increase, and Seattle showed a 15.4% increase.

“Some recent signs suggest that the historically tight inventory pressures may finally be starting to ease,” said Zillow Economist Matthew Speakman.

“Should those signs materialize, the meteoric rise in home prices may finally have a reason to come back down to earth. For now, red hot home price appreciation shows few signs of cooling.”