August 2018 CoreLogic Home Prices Up 5.5% Year-Over-Year

CoreLogic's Home Price Index (HPI) shows that home prices in the USA are up 5.5 % year-over-year (reported up 0.1 % month-over-month). CoreLogic HPI is used in the Federal Reserves' Flow of Funds to calculate the values of residential real estate. The quote of the day was in this data release:

.... The rise in mortgage rates this summer to their highest level in seven years has made it more difficult for potential buyers to afford a home ...

Analyst Opinion of CoreLogic's HPI

Home price averages seem to be averaging 6% year-over-year. According to CoreLogic:

.... revisions with public records data are standard, and to ensure accuracy, CoreLogic incorporates the newly released public data to provide updated results.

Note that CoreLogic forecasts:

Looking ahead, the CoreLogic HPI Forecast indicates that the national home-price index is projected to continue to increase by 4.7 percent on a year-over-year basis from August 2018 to August 2019. On a month-over-month basis, home prices are expected to decrease by 0.4 percent from August to September 2018

Dr Frank Nothaft, chief economist for CoreLogic stated:

The rise in mortgage rates this summer to their highest level in seven years has made it more difficult for potential buyers to afford a home. The slackening in demand is reflected in the slowing of national appreciation, as illustrated in the CoreLogic Home Price Index. National appreciation in August was the slowest in nearly two years, and we expect appreciation to slow further in the coming year.

Frank Martell, president and CEO of CoreLogic stated:

In some markets, homebuyers and sellers are remaining cautious and taking a pause as price appreciation continues to rise. By waiting to sell, homeowners believe they will get the greatest return on their investment; the more money they have for a downpayment, the easier the purchase payments will be for their next home.

Caveats Relating to Home Price Indices

There is no such thing as an "accurate" home price index. CoreLogic HPI is a repeat sales type index which should not be skewed by changes in the mix of home sales. For more information, please read: http://www.philadelphiafed.org/research-and-data/publications/research-rap/2014/house-price-indexes.pdf

Frome CoreLogic:

The CoreLogic HPI™ is built on industry-leading public record, servicing and securities real-estate databases and incorporates more than 40 years of repeat-sales transactions for analyzing home price trends. Generally released on the first Tuesday of each month with an average five-week lag, the CoreLogic HPI is designed to provide an early indication of home price trends by market segment and for the "Single-Family Combined" tier representing the most comprehensive set of properties, including all sales for single-family attached and single-family detached properties. The indexes are fully revised with each release and employ techniques to signal turning points sooner. The CoreLogic HPI provides measures for multiple market segments, referred to as tiers, based on property type, price, time between sales, loan type (conforming vs. non-conforming) and distressed sales. Broad national coverage is available from the national level down to ZIP Code, including non-disclosure states.

CoreLogic HPI Forecasts™ are based on a two-stage, error-correction econometric model that combines the equilibrium home price—as a function of real disposable income per capita—with short-run fluctuations caused by market momentum, mean-reversion, and exogenous economic shocks like changes in the unemployment rate. With a 30-year forecast horizon, CoreLogic HPI Forecasts project CoreLogic HPI levels for two tiers—"Single-Family Combined" (both attached and detached) and "Single-Family Combined Excluding Distressed Sales." As a companion to the CoreLogic HPI Forecasts, Stress-Testing Scenarios align with Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR) national scenarios to project five years of home prices under baseline, adverse and severely adverse scenarios at state, CBSA and ZIP Code levels. The forecast accuracy represents a 95-percent statistical confidence interval with a +/- 2.0 percent margin of error for the index.

Source: CoreLogic