- CoreLogic U.S. Home Price Index annual growth at highest level since June 2018
- HPI Forecast predicts home price growth will slow over the 12 months through August 2021 with price declines in 27 states
CoreLogic® (NYSE: CLGX), a leading global property information, analytics and data-enabled solutions provider, today released the CoreLogic Home Price Index (HPI™) and HPI Forecast™ for August 2020. Nationally, home prices increased 5.9% in August 2020, compared with August 2019, and the gain was up nearly 1% compared to the prior month, when home prices increased 5.1% year over year.
Despite the continued pressures of the pandemic, consumer home-purchasing power has stayed strong as mortgage rates remain at record lows. Meanwhile, for-sale inventory has continued to dwindle, dropping 17% year over year in August, which created upward pressure on home price appreciation as buyers compete for the limited supply of homes.
“Consumers who have not been as financially impacted by the ongoing economic pressures are taking advantage of low mortgage rates to either break into the market, upgrade their living situations or purchase second homes and investment properties,” said Frank Martell, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “With heightened activity putting a strain on the current for-sale inventory, strong demand should help spur new homebuilding activity.”
Home price growth is expected to slow as greater availability of new and existing homes are placed for sale in 2021 and elevated unemployment saps buyer demand. The HPI Forecast shows prices will start to downshift in early 2021, with annual U.S. HPI gains slowing to just 0.2% by August 2021 and many locations experiencing a decline in prices.
“The imbalance between homebuyer demand and for-sale inventory is particularly acute for lower-priced homes,” said Dr. Frank Nothaft, chief economist at CoreLogic. “Because of this imbalance, homes priced more than 25% below the median were up 8.6% in price over the last year, compared with the 5.9% price increase for all homes.”
Despite the rapid acceleration of national home price growth, local markets continue to vary. For instance, in Phoenix, where there is a severe shortage of for-sale homes, prices increased 9.8% in August. Meanwhile, the New York-Jersey City-White Plains metro recorded an annual decline in home prices of -0.1%, as residents opt for more space and privacy in less densely populated areas. By state, Idaho, Arizona and Maine experienced the strongest price growth in August, up 10.8%, 9.7% and 9.6%, respectively.
Looking forward, the HPI Forecast also reveals the disparity of home price growth across metros. In markets like Las Vegas, where the local tourism economy and job market continue to struggle, home prices are expected to decline 6.5% by August 2021. Conversely, in San Francisco, home prices are forecasted to increase 7.8% over the next 12 months as low inventory continues to push prices up.
The CoreLogic Market Risk Indicator (MRI), a monthly update of the overall health of housing markets across the country, predicts that metros such as Las Vegas and Miami — areas that have been hard hit by the collapse of the tourism market — are at the greatest risk (above 70%) of a decline in home prices over the next 12 months. Other metro areas with a high risk of price declines include Lake Charles, Louisiana; Springfield, Massachusetts and Modesto, California.
The next CoreLogic HPI press release, featuring September 2020 data, will be issued on November 3 at 8:00 a.m. ET.
Methodology
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 indices 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, metropolitan areas and ZIP Code levels. The forecast accuracy represents a 95% statistical confidence interval with a +/- 2% margin of error for the index.
About Market Risk Indicator
Market Risk Indicators are a subscription-based analytics solution that provide monthly updates on the overall “health” of housing markets across the country. CoreLogic data scientists combine world-class analytics with detailed economic and housing data to help determine the likelihood of a housing bubble burst in 392 major metros and all 50 states. Market Risk Indicators is a multi-phase regression model that provides a probability score (from 1 to 100) on the likelihood of two scenarios per metro: a >10% price reduction and a ≤ 10% price reduction. The higher the score, the higher the risk of a price reduction.
About the Market Condition Indicators
As part of the CoreLogic HPI and HPI Forecasts offerings, Market Condition Indicators are available for all metropolitan areas and identify individual markets as “overvalued”, “at value”, or “undervalued.” These indicators are derived from the long-term fundamental values, which are a function of real disposable income per capita. Markets are labeled as overvalued if the current home price indexes exceed their long-term values by greater than 10%, and undervalued where the long-term values exceed the index levels by greater than 10%.
Source: CoreLogic
The data provided are for use only by the primary recipient or the primary recipient’s publication or broadcast. This data may not be resold, republished or licensed to any other source, including publications and sources owned by the primary recipient’s parent company without prior written permission from CoreLogic. Any CoreLogic data used for publication or broadcast, in whole or in part, must be sourced as coming from CoreLogic, a data and analytics company. For use with broadcast or web content, the citation must directly accompany first reference of the data. If the data are illustrated with maps, charts, graphs or other visual elements, the CoreLogic logo must be included on screen or website. For questions, analysis or interpretation of the data, contact Valerie Sheets at newsmedia@corelogic.com. Data provided may not be modified without the prior written permission of CoreLogic. Do not use the data in any unlawful manner. The data are compiled from public records, contributory databases and proprietary analytics, and its accuracy is dependent upon these sources.
About CoreLogic
CoreLogic (NYSE: CLGX), the leading provider of property insights and solutions, promotes a healthy housing market and thriving communities. Through its enhanced property data solutions, services and technologies, CoreLogic enables real estate professionals, financial institutions, insurance carriers, government agencies and other housing market participants to help millions of people find, buy and protect their homes. For more information, please visit www.corelogic.com.
CORELOGIC, the CoreLogic logo, CoreLogic HPI and CoreLogic HPI Forecast are trademarks of CoreLogic, Inc. and/or its subsidiaries. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
Media Contact
Valerie Sheets
newsmedia@corelogic.com