Written by Steven Hansen
CoreLogic’s Home Price Index (HPI) home prices for October 2020 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.
…. COVID has contributed to the acute shortage of inventory as the pace of new construction slowed and older prospective sellers postponed listing their homes until after the pandemic ….
Analyst Opinion of CoreLogic’s HPI
This is a rear view of home prices. There are several likely scenarios:
- 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 COVID restrictions and elevated unemployment.
- There will be a great relocation spurred by the continuation of working from home [why live in an expensive location if you can live anywhere in the world you want].
- Some combination of above
Note the Forecast from CoreLogic on future home price growth:
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.
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 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. 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.
The pandemic has shifted home buyer interest toward detached rather than attached homes. 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.”
HPI Case-Shiller Trends – Year-over-Year Growth
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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 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.
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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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