CoreLogic Reports Home Prices Rise by 12 Percent Year Over Year in January

CoreLogic a leading residential property information, analytics and services provider, today released its January CoreLogic Home Price Index (HPI®) report. Home prices nationwide, including distressed sales, increased 12 percent in January 2014 compared to January 2013. This change represents 23 months of consecutive year-over-year increases in home prices nationally. On a month-over-month basis, home prices nationwide, including distressed sales, increased by 0.9 percent in January 2014 compared to December 2013.

At the state level, including distressed sales, Louisiana, Nebraska and Texas surpassed their previous home price peaks in January 2014. In all, 22 states and the District of Columbia are at or within 10 percent of their peak home price appreciation. Additionally, over the past year, seven states equaled or grew faster than the nation as a whole, including Nevada, California, Oregon, Michigan, Georgia, Arizona and Florida.

Excluding distressed sales, home prices nationally increased 9.8 percent in January 2014 compared to January 2013 and 0.7 percent month over month compared to December 2013. Distressed sales include short sales and real estate owned (REO) transactions.

The CoreLogic Pending HPI indicates that February 2014 home prices, including distressed sales, are projected to increase 12.5 percent year over year from February 2013. On a month-over-month basis, home prices are expected to increase 0.7 percent from January 2014 to February 2014. Excluding distressed sales, February 2014 home prices are poised to rise 10.4 percent year over year from February 2013 and 1.1 percent month over month from January 2014. The CoreLogic Pending HPI is a proprietary and exclusive metric that provides the most current indication of trends in home prices. It is based on Multiple Listing Service (MLS) data that measures price changes for the most recent month.

“Polar vortices and a string of snow storms did not manage to weaken house price appreciation in January,” said Dr. Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic. “The last time January month-over-month and year-over-year price appreciation was this strong was at the height of the housing bubble in 2006.”

“Home prices continued to march higher in January and we expect to see more increases as the market comes out of hibernation for the spring buying season,” said Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “Excluding distressed sales, all 50 states and the District of Columbia showed year-over-year home price appreciation for January.”

Including distressed sales, the five states with the highest home price appreciation were Nevada (+22.2 percent), California (+20.3 percent), Oregon (+14.3 percent), Michigan (+13.7 percent) and Georgia (+13.4 percent).

Excluding distressed sales, the five states with the highest home price appreciation were Nevada (+17.2 percent), California (+16.0 percent), Florida (+12.7 percent), Arizona (+11.5 percent) and Oregon (+11.4 percent).