FHFA Home Price Appreciation
How fast single-family house prices have risen or fallen in a tract, measured from a repeat-sales index rather than from what happened to sell.
On this page
The rate at which single-family house prices have changed in a tract, taken from the Federal Housing Finance Agency's annual repeat-sales index.
FHFA's index "measures average price changes in sales or refinancings on the same properties" (FHFA HPI Frequently Asked Questions). Comparing each property against its own earlier price is what separates this family from the median home value reported in survey data. A tract's median value can rise because prices rose or because larger and newer homes were the ones that sold; FHFA calls its approach a "constant quality" index precisely because it holds the property fixed and isolates the price movement.
The index is published once a year and is nominal, so it is not adjusted for inflation. Each tract's index is scaled to its own base year, so the level of one tract's index says nothing about another's. Only the rate of change is comparable between places, and that is what this family exposes.
Metrics in this family#
Average annual appreciation, 5-year window
trendThe average of the yearly percent changes in the index across the five most recent published years. This is an average of annual rates, not the total gain accumulated over five years.
Average annual appreciation, 10-year window
trendThe same measure over the ten most recent published years. The longer window smooths the sharp swings of the early 2020s and describes a tract's price behaviour across a fuller cycle.
Total appreciation, full published series
trendThe total percent change in the index between the first and last year we carry, currently 2010 through the most recent release. This is a cumulative figure over the whole span rather than a per-year rate, so its magnitudes are much larger than those of the two windowed measures and the three should not be read on the same scale.
Considerations#
Coverage is partial. An index exists only for tracts with enough repeat transactions, so a large share of US tracts carry no value in any window. Where a tract's published series does not span a window, no figure is shown for that window rather than a partial one, so the shorter and longer windows do not cover identical sets of places.
FHFA revises history with every release, most heavily in the newest years, because seasoned loans and late-arriving originations add information about periods already published. The most recent year is the least settled.
The transaction sample comes from mortgage activity and is weighted toward conforming conventional lending, so markets where cash or non-conforming financing is common are represented less completely.
References#
- 1FHFA HPI Frequently Asked Questionshttps://www.fhfa.gov/faqs/hpi