Gaining Momentum: Annual U.S. Home Prices Appreciated 7.3% in October, CoreLogic Reports

Rhea-AI Summary

CoreLogic (NYSE: CLGX) reported that national home prices rose by 7.3% in October 2020 compared to the previous year, marking the fastest growth since April 2014. Month-over-month, prices increased 1.1%. This surge is attributed to high demand amid ongoing supply shortages, exacerbated by COVID-19. The HPI Forecast predicts a slowdown in growth to 1.9% by October 2021. Local markets show varied trends, with Phoenix experiencing a 12.1% increase while New York recorded just 2.1%. The CoreLogic Market Risk Indicator highlights potential declines in cities like Las Vegas.

Positive

• Home prices increased 7.3% year-over-year in October 2020, the fastest since April 2014.
• Month-over-month prices rose by 1.1%.
• New home construction surged, indicating strong builder confidence.
• First-time buyers are expected to contribute significantly to home purchases in the coming year.

Negative

• HPI Forecast suggests a slowdown in home price growth to 1.9% by October 2021.
• Some regions, like Las Vegas, are projected to see a decline in home prices by 1.8%.
• Markets such as Lake Charles, Louisiana, and Prescott, Arizona, have over a 70% risk of price declines.

IRVINE, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--CoreLogic^® (NYSE: CLGX), a leading global property information, analytics and data-enabled solutions provider, today released the CoreLogic Home Price Index (HPI^™) and HPI Forecast^™ for October 2020. Nationally, home prices increased 7.3% in October 2020, compared with October 2019, marking the fastest annual appreciation since April 2014. On a month-over-month basis, home prices increased by 1.1% compared to September 2020.

Home prices climbed in recent months due to heightened demand and ongoing home supply constraints. The supply shortage could further intensify as COVID-19 cases continue to rise and would-be sellers remain hesitant about putting their homes on the market. However, to keep up with the rising demand, new home construction surged in October and builder confidence reached a new high for the third consecutive month. The decreased pressure on supply could moderate home price growth over the next year. This is reflected in the CoreLogic HPI Forecast, which shows home prices slowing to 1.9% by October 2021. However, should the economic recovery from the pandemic be more robust, then we would expect projections for home price performance to improve.

“Home buyers have been spurred by record-low mortgage rates and an urgency to buy or upgrade to more space, especially as much of the American workforce continues to work from home,” said Frank Martell, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “First-time buyers in particular should remain a big part of next year’s home purchases, as the largest wave of millennials is heading into prime home-buying years.”

Despite the rapid acceleration of national home price growth, local markets continue to vary. For instance, in Phoenix, where there is a severe shortage of for-sale homes, prices increased 12.1% in October. Meanwhile, the New York-Jersey City-White Plains metro recorded only a small annual increase of 2.1%, as residents continue to seek out more space in less densely populated areas. At the state level, Maine, Idaho and Arizona experienced the strongest price growth in October, up 14.9%, 13.1% and 12%, respectively.

“The pandemic has shifted home buyer interest toward detached rather than attached homes,” said Dr. Frank Nothaft, chief economist at CoreLogic. “Detached homes offer more living space and are typically located in less densely populated neighborhoods. And while prices of single-family detached homes posted an annual increase of 7.9% in October, the price of attached homes rose only 4.5% year over year.”

The HPI Forecast also reveals the disparity in expected home price growth across metros. In markets like Las Vegas, where the local tourism economy and job market continue to struggle, home prices are expected to decline 1.8% by October 2021. Conversely, in San Diego, home prices are forecasted to increase 7.9% over the next 12 months as low inventory continues to push prices up.

The CoreLogic Market Risk Indicator (MRI), a monthly update of the overall health of housing markets across the country, predicts that metros such as Lake Charles, Louisiana, and Prescott, Arizona, are at the greatest risk (above 70%) of a decline in home prices over the next 12 months, while Miami, Las Vegas and Gulfport-Biloxi-Pascagoula, Mississippi, are at moderate risk (50%-70%) of a decrease.

The next CoreLogic HPI press release, featuring November 2020 data, will be issued on January 5 at 8:00 a.m. ET.

Methodology

The CoreLogic HPI^™ is built on industry-leading public record, servicing and securities real-estate databases and incorporates more than 40 years of repeat-sales transactions for analyzing home price trends. Generally released on the first Tuesday of each month with an average five-week lag, the CoreLogic HPI is designed to provide an early indication of home price trends by market segment and for the “Single-Family Combined” tier, representing the most comprehensive set of properties, including all sales for single-family attached and single-family detached properties. The indices are fully revised with each release and employ techniques to signal turning points sooner. The CoreLogic HPI provides measures for multiple market segments, referred to as tiers, based on property type, price, time between sales, loan type (conforming vs. non-conforming) and distressed sales. Broad national coverage is available from the national level down to ZIP Code, including non-disclosure states.

CoreLogic HPI Forecasts^™ are based on a two-stage, error-correction econometric model that combines the equilibrium home price—as a function of real disposable income per capita—with short-run fluctuations caused by market momentum, mean-reversion, and exogenous economic shocks like changes in the unemployment rate. With a 30-year forecast horizon, CoreLogic HPI Forecasts project CoreLogic HPI levels for two tiers — “Single-Family Combined” (both attached and detached) and “Single-Family Combined Excluding Distressed Sales.” As a companion to the CoreLogic HPI Forecasts, Stress-Testing Scenarios align with Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR) national scenarios to project five years of home prices under baseline, adverse and severely adverse scenarios at state, metropolitan areas and ZIP Code levels. The forecast accuracy represents a 95% statistical confidence interval with a +/- 2% margin of error for the index.

About Market Risk Indicator

Market Risk Indicators are a subscription-based analytics solution that provide monthly updates on the overall “health” of housing markets across the country. CoreLogic data scientists combine world-class analytics with detailed economic and housing data to help determine the likelihood of a housing bubble burst in 392 major metros and all 50 states. Market Risk Indicators is a multi-phase regression model that provides a probability score (from 1 to 100) on the likelihood of two scenarios per metro: a >10% price reduction and a ≤ 10% price reduction. The higher the score, the higher the risk of a price reduction.

About the Market Condition Indicators

As part of the CoreLogic HPI and HPI Forecasts offerings, Market Condition Indicators are available for all metropolitan areas and identify individual markets as “overvalued”, “at value”, or “undervalued.” These indicators are derived from the long-term fundamental values, which are a function of real disposable income per capita. Markets are labeled as overvalued if the current home price indexes exceed their long-term values by greater than 10%, and undervalued where the long-term values exceed the index levels by greater than 10%.

Source: CoreLogic

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About CoreLogic

CoreLogic (NYSE: CLGX), the leading provider of property insights and solutions, promotes a healthy housing market and thriving communities. Through its enhanced property data solutions, services and technologies, CoreLogic enables real estate professionals, financial institutions, insurance carriers, government agencies and other housing market participants to help millions of people find, buy and protect their homes. For more information, please visit www.corelogic.com.

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