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House price index

Measure of the price changes of residential housing

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United States

FHFA/OFHEO

The US Federal Housing Finance Agency (formerly Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight, a.k.a. OFHEO) publishes the HPI index, a broad quarterly measure of the movement of single-family house prices.

The HPI is a weighted, repeat-sales index that measures average price changes in repeat sales or refinancings on the same properties in 363 metropolises. This information is obtained by reviewing repeat mortgage transactions on single-family properties whose mortgages have been purchased or securitized by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac since January 1975.

Since the HPI index only includes houses with mortgages within the conforming amount limits, the index has a natural cap and does not account for jumbo mortgages.

The HPI was developed in conjunction with OFHEO's (now FHFA) responsibilities as a regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It is used to measure the adequacy of their capital against the value of their assets, which are primarily home mortgages.

On July 30, 2008, OFHEO became part of the new Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). Accordingly, the index is now termed the FHFA HPI.

S&P/Case-Shiller indexes

The Case-Shiller index prices are measured monthly and track repeat sales of houses using a modified version of the weighted-repeat sales methodology proposed by Karl Case, Robert Shiller, and Allan Weiss. This means that, to a large extent, it can adjust for the quality of the homes sold, unlike simple averages.

The Case-Shiller index has a long lag time as a monthly tracking index. Typically, it takes about 2 months for S&P to publish the results, as opposed to 1 month for most other monthly indices and indicators. In addition, specific indexes are available for specific metropolitan areas and composite indexes for the top 20 and 10 metro areas nationwide.

FNC Residential Price Index

FNC Inc. publishes the Residential Price Index based on data collected from public records blended with real-time appraisals of property and neighborhood attributes. The RPI is the mortgage industry's first hedonic price index for residential properties. The RPI is constructed to gauge price movement among non-distressed home sales and excludes sales of foreclosed properties.[1]

The RPI has a lag time of about two months as a monthly tracking index. Specific indices are available for specific metropolitan areas, and composite indices are available for the top 10, 20, 30, and 100[2] metro areas. The RPI is also available at the zip code level and can be constructed to track price trends for specific characteristics (e.g., ranch-style house, colonial-style house, etc.) since preferences can change over time.

HouseCanary Home Price Index

HouseCanary publishes monthly HPI data at block, block group, zip code, metro division, and metropolitan levels. These indices include forecasts up to 3 years into the future.[1]

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