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Thursday, July 21, 2011

Other House Price Indexes

by Calculated Risk on 7/21/2011 05:45:00 PM

In addition to Case-Shiller and CoreLogic, I follow the following house price indexes: : RadarLogic (based on a house price per square foot method), FNC Residential Price Index (a hedonic price index), Clear Capital, Altos Research and Zillow.

CoreLogic already reported that the CoreLogic HPI increased 0.8% in May.

FNC reported:

Based on the latest data on non-distressed home sales (existing and new homes), FNC’s Residential Price Index™ (RPI) indicates that single-family home prices were up again in May at a seasonally unadjusted rate of 0.8%.
...
Minneapolis, Boston, Charlotte, Portland, Chicago, and Washington D.C. show the strongest price momentum – rising month-over-month since March by a cumulative total of 9.2%, 7.1%, 5.7%, 5.5%, 5.3% and 3.5% respectively. Orlando and Phoenix, on the other hand, lead the nation in home price declines during 2011–having lost close to 5.0% over the last five months, followed by Las Vegas, New York, and Miami at about 3.0%.
You can see the FNC composite indexes, and prices for 30 cities here.

• The FHFA (GSEs only): FHFA House Price Index Rises 0.4 Percent in May; Second Consecutive Monthly Increase
U.S. house prices rose 0.4 percent on a seasonally adjusted basis from April to May, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s monthly House Price Index. The previously reported 0.8 percent increase in April was revised to a 0.2 percent increase. For the 12 months ending in May, U.S. prices fell 6.3 percent.
• From RadarLogic Weak Fundamentals Undermine Seasonal Strength in Home Prices:
While the RPX Composite increased somewhat during April and gained 1.2 percent month-over-month in May, these gains have barely offset declines in
January. In contrast to this year’s performance to date, the RPX Composite Price increased significantly over the same period during seven of the past ten years.

Home prices usually increase in the spring due to seasonal factors, and the bulk of the gains typically occur by May. The lackluster performance of the RPX Composite Price to date means that we are almost assured to see new post-bust lows in the fall, when seasonal strength comes to an end and softening demand pulls housing prices downward.
And RadarLogic's prediction for Case-Shiller Not Seasonally Adjusted:
Last month, we predicted that the S&P/Case-Shiller 10-City composite for April 2011 would be about 153 and the 20-City composite would be roughly 140. In fact, the 10-City composite was 152.51 and the 20-City composite was 138.84.

This month, we expect the May 2011 10-City composite index to be about 154 and the 20-City index to be roughly 141.
This suggests a slight increase for the Case-Shiller index on a seasonally adjusted basis.

Overall this suggests most of the recent increase in prices is seasonal, and we'd expect to see declines again late this year. The Case-Shiller index for May will be released Tuesday, July 26th at 9 AM ET.