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Tuesday, February 05, 2019

CoreLogic: House Prices up 4.7% Year-over-year in December

by Calculated Risk on 2/05/2019 08:58:00 AM

Notes: This CoreLogic House Price Index report is for December. The recent Case-Shiller index release was for November. The CoreLogic HPI is a three month weighted average and is not seasonally adjusted (NSA).

From CoreLogic: CoreLogic Reports December Home Prices Increased by 4.7 Percent Year Over Year

CoreLogic® ... today released the CoreLogic Home Price Index (HPI™) and HPI Forecast™ for December 2018, which shows home prices rose both year over year and month over month. Home prices increased nationally by 4.7 percent year over year from December 2017. On a month-over-month basis, prices increased by 0.1 percent in December 2018. (November 2018 data was revised. Revisions with public records data are standard, and to ensure accuracy, CoreLogic incorporates the newly released public data to provide updated results each month.)

Looking ahead, the CoreLogic HPI Forecast indicates home prices will increase by 4.6 percent on a year-over-year basis from December 2018 to December 2019. Comparing the annual average HPI and HPI forecast for 2018 and 2019, average price growth is forecasted to slow from 5.8 percent to 3.4 percent. On a month-over-month basis, home prices are expected to decrease by 1 percent from December 2018 to January 2019. The CoreLogic HPI Forecast is a projection of home prices calculated using the CoreLogic HPI and other economic variables. Values are derived from state-level forecasts by weighting indices according to the number of owner-occupied households for each state.

“Higher mortgage rates slowed home sales and price growth during the second half of 2018,” said Dr. Frank Nothaft, chief economist for CoreLogic. “Annual price growth peaked in March and averaged 6.4 percent during the first six months of the year. In the second half of 2018, growth moderated to 5.2 percent. For 2019, we are forecasting an average annual price growth of 3.4 percent.”
emphasis added
CoreLogic HPI CR Note: The CoreLogic YoY increase had been in the 5% to 7% range for the last few years. This is the slowest twelve-month home-price growth rate since August 2012.

The year-over-year comparison has been positive for almost seven consecutive years since turning positive year-over-year in February 2012.