The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) recently released its monthly House Price Index (HPI) report detailing that house prices have risen nationwide in November, up 1.1 percent from the previous months. Between November 2020 to November 2021, FHFA reports that house prices have increased 17.5 percent. "House price levels remained elevated in November, but the data indicate a pivot," said Will Doerner, Ph.D., Supervisory Economist in FHFA's Division of Research and Statistics. "The last four months reflect average gains of 1.0 percentage point, down from the larger prior changes during the spring and summer months. This new trend is a welcome shift but still twice the monthly average we have seen in the last 20 years, which echoes concerns about access and affordability in housing markets."
Rising housing prices affect rental markets as renters remain because prices are too high, diminishing the turnover rate. Combined with a shortage of housing, rental rates skyrocket, and housing authorities' budgets are strained to meet fair market rates.
The FHFA HPI is the nation's only collection of publicly available house price indexes that measure changes in single-family home values based on data from all 50 states and over 400 American cities that extend back to the mid-1970s.
FHFA releases HPI data and reports on a quarterly and monthly basis. Click here to view January’s HPI report.