Home prices continued to increase in June but the Home Price Index (HPI) released by Black Knight Financial Services showed continued slowing in the rate of price growth. The national HPI rose by 0.8 percent to $241,000. While month-over-month increases have varied widely - dipping as low at 0.1 percent in December 2013 only to hit 0.7 percent a couple of months later, the annual rate of increase has been steadily moderating for months.
In September of last year the HPI was 9 percent higher than a year earlier, by April the annual increase was 6.4 percent. Today Black Knight said the year-over-year increase in June was 5.5 percent. For the year-to-date the increase in the HPI has been 4.3 percent. Prices nationally are now 10.4 percent below the peak of $268,000 reached in June 2006.
The 20 largest states and 40 largest metropolitan areas all had month-over-month price gains with largest in Nevada. Reno had the largest gain among all metropolitan areas, 1.9 percent. Colorado and Texas continued their almost monthly pattern of establishing new price peaks as did their major cities Denver, Austin, Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio.
Besides Nevada where prices rose 1.4 percent from June, other states with large increases were Michigan (1.3 percent) and Rhode Island, Massachusetts, Florida, and Colorado each with gains of 1.2 percent. The lowest rates of increase were in North Carolina and Washington, DC (+0.1 percent) Virginia and Arkansas (+0.2 percent), and Maryland, Missouri and Arizona (+0.3)
While Reno's price gains topped all metros it was followed by New Haven and Greely, Colorado at 1.5 percent and Norwich, Detroit, and Vallejo, California all at 1.4 percent. At the bottom were four cities in North Carolina where prices declined from the previous month, Greensboro (-0.4 percent), Durham, Wilmington, and Winston (-0.2 percent).
The Black Knight HPI combines the company's property and loan-level databases to produce a repeat sales analysis of home prices as of their transaction dates every month for each of more than 18,500 U.S. ZIP codes. The Black Knight HPI represents the price of non-distressed sales by taking into account price discounts for REO and short sales.
