The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) showed that house prices rose by 1.4% in the United States during the fourth quarter of 2015. This marked a streak of 18 consecutive quarterly gains.
The FHFA House Price Index was up by 5.8% from the fourth quarter of 2014. Its seasonally adjusted monthly index for December was up by 0.4% from November.
While this is a broad representation of the housing market, the index is taken from a basket of home sales prices from mortgages that were sold to or were guaranteed by the two mortgage government-sponsored enterprises of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Another interesting standout in this report, outside of that 5.8% annualized gain, was that the FHFA indicated that the price changes of other goods and services were actually in the red at -0.8%. It further noted that the inflation-adjusted price of homes rose by about 6.7% over the latest year.
Home prices were up universally in this report, covering every state. The top five states in annual appreciation were Nevada (12.7%), Colorado (10.9%), Idaho (10.7%), Washington (10.7%) and Oregon (10.6%).
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To show about the worry of the San Francisco area housing bubble, which has started to garner increasing coverage in light of “unicorn” funding and technology valuations dropping, the San Francisco regional metro report rose by 20.7%. Prices were the weakest in New Haven-Milford, Conn., with a drop of 1.5%.
The FHFA’s official commentary said:
Instability in financial markets did not seem to put much of a drag on home prices in the fourth quarter. The fourth quarter 1.4 percent increase for the U.S. was in line with the extremely steady—but historically elevated—appreciation rates we have been observing for several years now.
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