Washington, D.C. – U.S. house prices rose 0.7 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from October to November, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s monthly House Price Index. October’s previously reported 0.6 percent increase was revised downward to a 0.4 percent increase. For the 12 months ending in November, U.S. house prices rose 0.5 percent. The U.S. index is 10.3 percent below its April 2007 peak.
The FHFA monthly index is calculated using purchase prices of houses backing mortgages that have been sold to or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. For the nine Census Divisions, seasonally adjusted monthly price changes from October to November ranged from -0.4 percent in the East South Central Division to +2.3 percent in the Pacific Division.
With this month’s release, FHFA is using enhanced software for processing address information found in the raw data used to construct the index. The software improves the accuracy of Metropolitan Area assignments given to property addresses and allows FHFA to retain slightly more historical data for index estimation. The impact of the new software on index estimates is generally very small; the October to November change in the national index (+0.7 percent) was not affected by the conversion to the new software. Further detail on the impact will be provided with next month’s HPI release.
Monthly index values and appreciation rate estimates are provided in the table and graphs on the following pages. As with FHFA’s quarterly HPI, the estimates will be revised as new data become available. Quarterly HPI reports include updated monthly data presented in the same format as the attached table.
For detailed information concerning the monthly HPI, please see the HPI Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ). The next release will be on Feb. 25, 2010 and will include monthly data for December as well as data for the fourth quarter of 2009.
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Corinne Russell (202) 649-3032 / Stefanie Johnson (202) 649-3030