Home Prices Rise in All States in February 2016

National home prices increased 6.8 percent year over year and 1.1 percent month over month in February 2016, according to the latest CoreLogic Home Price Index (HPI®) Report. While the HPI has increased on a year-over-year basis every month since March 2012, prices are still 6.5 percent below the April 2006 peak. Adjusting for inflation, U.S. home prices increased 7 percent year over year, and are 19.4 percent below their peak[1].

Figure 1 shows the year-over-year HPI growth for the 25 highest appreciating states for February 2016 along with their highest and lowest historical appreciation rates. Washington showed the largest HPI gain of all states in February 2016 with a 12.4 percent year-over-year increase, followed by Colorado (+10.5 percent) and Florida (+10.2 percent). For the first time in more than two years, all states showed year-over-year appreciation. Nevada home prices were the farthest below their all-time HPI high, still 29.3 percent lower than the state’s March 2006 peak.

Figure 2 shows the year-over-year HPI change in select oil-patch areas for February 2016 compared with February 2015. Home prices continued to increase in these areas in February 2016, though the rate of increase slowed for all but one of the Texas metropolitan areas.

The slowdown in appreciation was the largest for Midland, Texas, which had a year-over-year increase of 9.9 percent in February 2015, but only a 3.6 percent annual gain in February 2016. Midland has the highest concentration of oil employment of all metropolitan areas in the U.S.