California Home Price Increases Double National Gains

Home prices continue to make substantial gains in most areas of the country with some areas in California seeing an increase of as much as 3 percent in the Lender Processing Service (LPS) Home Price Index (HPI) in a single month.  LPS released its HPI report for April and put the nationwide HPI at $217,000, a 1.5 percent increase from March and up 4.5 percent from April 2012.

California saw the greatest month-over-month increase in the HPI, up 2.6 percent for the month to $351,000 and a 17.9 percent increase for the year.  It was followed by Nevada where the index increased 2.3 percent from March, Oregon, 2.1 percent; Washington, 2.0 percent (a 9.5 percent increase year-over-year); and Illinois and Michigan each at 1.9 percent.   Illinois was up 4.6 percent on an annual basis and Michigan increased 9.4 percent.  No annual figure was given for Nevada.

Even those states at the bottom of the list had solid monthly increases.  Rhode Island had the smallest change, 0.5 percent, followed by Tennessee at 0.7 percent, and Virginia and Hawaii, each at 0.8 percent.  

Among metropolitan areas San Francisco had the strongest showing, a 3.6 percent increase, with Sacramento and San Jose increasing by 3 percent.   All three cities had year-over-year price growth exceeding 20 percent.   Nine of the ten biggest movers among metropolitan areas were in California, the single exception being Bend, Oregon, number seven at 2.8 percent.  Again, those metropolitan areas with the smallest monthly movement were all in positive territory; San Antonio, up 0.1 percent, Virginia Beach, 0.3 percent; and Greensboro, North Carolina, 0.4 percent.

LPS's HPI uses a repeat sales analysis based on April residential real estate transactions and information from its own loan-level databases.  The analysis covers more than 15,500 U.S. ZIP codes and represents the price of non-distressed sales by taking into account price discounts for bank owned real estate (REO) and short sales.