Home Prices Less Than 15 Percent Away From 2006 Peak

Lender Processing Services (LPS) Home Price Index (HPI) rose 0.6 percent in July compared to June.  The index has increased 7.5 percent since the end of 2012 and is 8.7 percent higher than it was in June 2012.   

LPS bases its HPI report based on the month's residential real estate transactions and a repeat sales analysis of its property and loan-level databases.  The HPI represents the price of non-distressed sales by taking into account price discounts for bank-owned property (REO) and short sales.

The July index was at $231,000 compared to $229,000 in June, $214,000 at the end of the year, and $212,000 in July 2012.  Thus the index rose as much in the most recent month ($2,000) as it did in the period of July through December 2012.   The current index is 14.7 percent below the national housing price peak of $270,000 reached in June 2006.

Minnesota and Utah posted the largest month-over-month price increases; both were up 1.1 percent.  Florida and Nevada were each up 1.0 percent followed by Georgia, North Dakota, Arizona, Michigan, and Idaho all of which increased 0.9 percent.  At the bottom were Pennsylvania, unchanged from June, Vermont, up 0.1 percent and New Mexico, North Carolina, Missouri, Arkansas, Nebraska, and Connecticut, each of which posted an 0.2 percent increase. 

Among large metropolitan areas Orlando had the largest monthly improvement at 1.6 percent followed by Stockton and Modesto, California at 1.4 percent and 1.3 percent respectively.  The largest negative changes were in Akron and Winston North Carolina at -0.4 percent each followed by Ocean City, New Jersey and Harrisburg each down 0.3 percent.