U.S. Monthly House Price Index Estimates 0.3 percent decline in August; Price index about the same as February 2005

Dennis Norman

Today the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) reported that U.S. home prices decreased 0.3 percent on a seasonally-adjusted basis from July to August and are down 3.6 percent for the past year. The U.S. home price index is now 10.7 percent below is April, 2007 peak.

The FHFA home price index is calculated using purchase price of houses with mortgages that have been sold to or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac (roughly 90 percent of all mortgages).

Below are some highlights from the report:

• The Pacific region (Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, California) did the best with a 1.2 percent increase in home prices for the period
• The South Atlantic region (Delaware, Maryland, District of Columbia, Virginia, West Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida) had the weakest numbers with a 1.6 percent decrease for the period.
• The home price indexfor August, 2009 is roughly the same as the February 2005 index
• Since 1991 the compound annual growth rate in the monthly home price index has been 3.8 percent
• Since 2000 the compound annual growth rate in the monthly home price index has been 4.0 percent

Something interesting I saw in the report was a graph showing the price change of the index relative to the peak in the price index back in April 2007. As you will see from the chart below it looks as though over the past few months the index has been “flirting with” a bottom….no doubt the downward slide evident in 2008 has subsided at least.

One last interesting tidbit I saw that is encouraging from a home price standpoint is that the decrease in the U.S. home price index for the past year is less than the year before in all nine regions.

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