Written by Steven Hansen
CoreLogic’s Home Price Index (HPI) shows home prices improved from 4.1 % to 4.5 % year-over-year. The data to date shows little effect of coronavirus, but CoreLogic is predicting small future increases for home prices.
…. Rapid decline of purchase activity starting in the middle of March can be seen in other CoreLogic data and is consistent with our HPI forecast of slowing price growth in April ….
Analyst Opinion of CoreLogic’s HPI
This is a rear view of home prices. Econintersect believes home prices will deteriorate as the year progresses as the knock-on effect of the coronavirus will grow. The worst-case will be a decline to Great Recession levels but the most likely scenario is a 10% decline roughly equal to the expected unemployment rate. Too much money is being removed from the economy due to the stay-at-home orders.
Note the Forecast from CoreLogic on future home price growth:
Increased homes sales in January and February 2020 accounts for the sustained acceleration of home prices seen in the March HPI. CoreLogic continues to monitor shifts in the housing market and economy in light of COVID-19, and, in the coming weeks, homebuying activity will likely continue to be tempered by unemployment and recommended ongoing social distancing practices. We can expect to see home price growth slow drastically in response to this declining demand, with the HPI Forecast predicting less than 1% annual increase in home prices by March 2021.
According to CoreLogic:
…. revisions with public records data are standard, and to ensure accuracy, CoreLogic incorporates the newly released public data to provide updated results.
Dr. Frank Nothaft, chief economist at CoreLogic stated:
Home prices for March reflect transactions negotiated primarily in the previous two months, prior to the implementation of the shelter-in-place policies. Rapid decline of purchase activity starting in the middle of March can be seen in other CoreLogic data and is consistent with our HPI forecast of slowing price growth in April. The first quarter GDP results showed that the country entered a recession in March. Unemployment claims have reached record highs and this economic environment will further impact the housing market into the foreseeable future.
HPI Case-Shiller Trends – Year-over-Year Growth
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From Frank Martell, president and CEO of CoreLogic:
The CoreLogic U.S. Home Price Index is predicted to remain largely unchanged over the next year or so after a long uninterrupted run of appreciation. Although the economic fallout from lockdown orders, put in place to fight the spread of COVID-19, will be profound, the basic supports for a rebound in home purchase activity remain in place. Once the shelter-in-place policies are lifted, we expect millennials, who submitted home-purchase applications well into the crisis, to lead the way back to a positive, purchase-driven housing cycle
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Caveats Relating to Home Price Indices
There is no such thing as an “accurate” home price index. CoreLogic HPI is a repeat sales-type index which should not be skewed by changes in the mix of home sales. For more information, please read: http://www.philadelphiafed.org/research-and-data/publications/research-rap/2014/house-price-indexes.pdf
From CoreLogic:
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 indexes 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, CBSA and ZIP Code levels. The forecast accuracy represents a 95-percent statistical confidence interval with a +/- 2.0 percent margin of error for the index.
Source: CoreLogic
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