Economists' Outlook

Housing stats and analysis from NAR's research experts.

Regional Home Prices

  • Yesterday, we looked at the FHFA and Case-Shiller release focusing on national data trends. Today, we’ll dig a bit deeper to look at more local data at the regional, state, and city or MSA level.
  • Monthly FHFA releases data at the Census division level and quarterly it releases state and metro area data. Case-Shiller offers data on 20-cities monthly. Both of these sources confirm the trend seen in NAR measures.
  • At the regional level: the most robust home price gains from a year ago at the end of 2015 were in the West. NAR reported price change of 8.6 percent in December. According to FHFA year over year prices in December 2015 rose 7.7 percent in the Pacific division which includes Hawaii, Alaska, Washington, Oregon, and California and 7.0 percent in the Mountain division which includes Montana, Idaho, Wyoming, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico. The East South Central Division which includes Alabama, Kentucky, Mississippi, and Tennessee also increased by 7.0 percent.
  • At the other end of the spectrum, NAR data showed the smallest price gains from a year ago in the Northeast (6.1 percent for the year ending in December), and FHFA showed a similar pattern. Prices rose 4.1 percent in New England (Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut) and 2.6 percent in the Middle Atlantic states (New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania) from December one year ago.
  • State by state data, pictured below, shows more detail. While Florida had strong growth, the South as a whole had more moderate growth than the West where Nevada, Colorado, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon all saw double-digit rates of price increase in the 4th quarter of 2015.
  • Among cities, Case-Shiller reported the biggest year over year gains in Portland (11.4%), San Francisco (10.3%), and Denver (10.2%). Each had more than 10 percent year over year gains. The smallest gains in Case Shiller’s cities were Cleveland at 2.8 percent, Chicago at 2.4 percent, and Washington DC at 1.7 percent. While NAR saw strong performance from the same three metro areas in the 4th quarter, NAR also saw strength in metro price data among metro areas in Florida that are not covered by the Case Shiller Index. In its quarterly release, FHFA produced a similar list of the top-20 metro areas. Again, the specific areas covered are different, but many of the top metro areas on FHFA’s list are in Florida and the West region including North Port-Sarasota-Bradenton (FL), Reno (NV), and Punta Gorda (FL) as the top 3.
  • price change
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