CoreLogic - Home Prices Increased 7% Year-Over-Year

CoreLogic Home Price Index and HPI Forecast for September 2017 shows home prices are up strongly both year over year and month over month. Home prices nationally increased year over year by 7 percent from September 2016 to September 2017, and on a month-over-month basis, home prices increased by 0.9 percent in September 2017 compared with August 2017, according to the CoreLogic HPI.

Looking ahead, the CoreLogic HPI Forecast indicates that home prices will increase by 4.7 percent on a year-over-year basis from September 2017 to September 2018, and on a month-over-month basis home prices are expected to decrease by 0.1 percent from September 2017 to October 2017. The CoreLogic HPI Forecast is a projection of home prices using the CoreLogic HPI and other economic variables. Values are derived from state-level forecasts by weighting indices according to the number of owner-occupied households for each state.

“Heading into the fall, home price growth continues to grow at a brisk pace,” said Dr. Frank Nothaft, chief economist for CoreLogic. “This appreciation reflects the low for-sale inventory that is holding back sales and pushing up prices. The CoreLogic Single-Family Rent Index rose about 3 percent over the last year, less than half the rise in the national Home Price Index.”

According to CoreLogic Market Condition Indicators (MCI) data, an analysis of housing values in the country’s 100 largest metropolitan areas based on housing stock, 36 percent of cities have an overvalued housing stock as of September 2017. The MCI analysis categorizes home prices in individual markets as undervalued, at value or overvalued by comparing home prices to their long-run, sustainable levels, which are supported by local market fundamentals such as disposable income. Also, as of September, 28 percent of the top 100 metropolitan areas were undervalued and 36 percent were at value. When looking at only the top 50 markets based on housing stock, 48 percent were overvalued, 16 percent were undervalued and 36 percent were at value. The MCI analysis defines an overvalued housing market as one in which home prices are at least 10 percent higher than the long-term, sustainable level, while an undervalued housing market is one in which home prices are at least 10 percent below the sustainable level.

“A strengthening economy, healthy consumer balance sheets and low mortgage interest rates are supporting the continued strong demand for residential real estate,” said Frank Martell, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “While demand and home price growth is in a sweet spot, a third of metropolitan markets are overvalued and this will become more of an issue if prices continue to rise next year as we anticipate.”

The YoY increase has been in the 5% to 7% range for the last couple of years. This is the top end of that range.

The year-over-year comparison has been positive for over five consecutive years since turning positive year-over-year in February 2012.