RISMEDIA, January 28, 2010—U.S. house prices rose 0.7% on a seasonally adjusted basis from October 2009 to November 2009, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s monthly House Price Index. October’s previously reported 0.6% increase was revised downward to a 0.4% increase. For the 12 months ending in November, U.S. house prices rose 0.5%. The U.S. index is 10.3% below its April 2007 peak. The FHFA monthly index is calculated using purchase prices of houses backing mortgages that have been sold to or guaranteed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. For the nine Census Divisions, seasonally adjusted monthly price changes from October to November ranged from –0.4% in the East South Central Division to + 2.3% in the Pacific Division.
With this month’s release, FHFA is using enhanced software for processing address information found in the raw data used to construct the index. The software improves the accuracy of Metropolitan Area assignments given to property addresses and allows FHFA to retain slightly more historical data for index estimation. The impact of the new software on index estimates is generally very small; the October to November change in the national index (+0.7%) was not affected by the conversion to the new software. Further detail on the impact will be provided with next month’s HPI release.
For more information, visit www.fhfa.org.
