U.S. house prices climb 5.2% in January

House prices increased 5.2% in January from a year earlier, slowing from December’s annualized gain of 5.4%, according to a report from the Federal Housing Finance Agency.
The data is a snapshot of the market before it was hit by the COVID-19 pandemic, said Lynn Fisher, the deputy director of the division of research and statistics at FHFA. While the disease began spreading in China in December, it didn’t show up in the U.S. until mid-January, via an infected traveler, and the first case of person-to-person transmission in the U.S. wasn’t discovered until late February.
“Transactions in January were unlikely to reflect much if any, influence from the COVID-19 outbreak,” Fisher said. “House prices in the Pacific and South Atlantic regions grew somewhat faster over the year ending in January 2020 than observed the same time a year ago.”
The FHFA monthly HPI is calculated uses sales prices for single-family houses bought with mortgages sold to or guaranteed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Because of this, the selection excludes high-end homes bought with jumbo loans as well as cash sales.
Across the nine census divisions, the South Atlantic division, including the Washington D.C. suburbs, saw the strongest appreciation growth, increasing by 6.4% January from a year earlier, according to the report.
The Mountain division, which includes Colorado, gained by 6.1%, and the Pacific area that includes California gained 5.2%. New England, including Massachusetts and Connecticut, grew 4.6%.
The smallest 12-month change was the 4.1% increase in the Middle Atlantic area, which includes New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

34 Trends That Will Define Home Design In 2020

Image
Kitchens 1. Three-tone kitchens.  Two-tone kitchen cabinets — meaning the upper cabinets are one color and the lower cabinets another color, or the perimeter cabinets are one color and the island is a different color — dominated kitchens in the past couple of years. So it’s only natural that designers are building on the trend rather than doing away with it. In a three-tone kitchen, one more color or material is introduced to create an asymmetry in the palette that helps define zones or functions and keeps the eye moving. Here, designer Janina Cabrera of  J Style at Home  designed a gorgeous kitchen with white perimeter cabinets, a light wood island base and a knockout powder-blue hutch. In this kitchen by  Hutker Architects , a deep navy defines the refrigerator and pantry wall to the left, joining white perimeter cabinets and a superlight wood island base. Wood via the beams, ceiling, shelves and flooring adds to the diverse three-tone palette. ...
Read more

10 Things You Should Buy Now To Get Through COVID-19 Cabin Fever This Winter

  1. Outdoor gear Dave Labbe , senior vice president at Kittery Trading Post, saw record sales this summer of items like kayaks, camping gear, and bicycles. He expects the trend to continue for the winter. "Our anticipation is that all winter categories will see the same trend," he says. "Snowshoeing, cross-country skiing, downhill skies, snowboarding, and winter camping and hiking will boom as people continue to participate in anything outdoor-related." And outdoor activities aren't just for weekends, either. Kids who are still learning from home will need outdoor breaks. Store inventories of  backyard ice rink kits ,  backyard snowboards , skates, sleds, and snowman kits may melt away quickly. 2. Outdoor clothing Coats, hats, and mittens are popular every winter season, but this year you might have trouble finding what you want as more people brave the cold and snow to fend off cabin fever. "People want to continue spending time together safely this winte...
Read more

Black Homeownership Plunges To Record Low

The homeownership rate of black Americans hit an all-time low in the first quarter of this year as black communities continue struggling to recover financially from the housing crisis a decade ago, recent U.S. Census Bureau data shows. The black homeownership rate has dropped 8.6 percentage points since peaking in 2004. “We can see that discrimination is still there, although it has changed its form,” Michela Zonta, a senior policy analyst at the Center for American Progress, told  The Wall Street Journal . Zonta released a study this week that found higher-income black homeowners are more likely to purchase homes in predominantly minority neighborhood, which have mostly failed to see home values rise since the foreclosure crisis. In comparison, neighborhoods with predominantly white borrowers have seen homes appreciate 3% between 2006 to 2017, while homes in predominantly black neighborhoods tended to be worth 6% less than they were in 2006, according to Zonta’s study. ...
Read more