Home Price Increases Narrow, Some States Show August Losses

Home prices ticked up a modest 0.4 percent in August Lender Processing Services (LPS) said today.  The company's Home Price Index (HPI) based on the months residential real estate transactions finished August at $231 compared to $230 in July.  The index was 9.0 percent higher than in August 2012 and 8.0 percent greater than at the end of 2012 when the index was at $212 and $214 respectively.  The LPS index takes into account price discounts for owned real estate and short sales.

Nevada saw the largest monthly increase among states, 1.4 percent followed by Florida and Michigan at 1.0 percent each.  Rhode Island and Colorado had the worst showings with each down 0.3 percent and Pennsylvania was also in negative territory with a decrease of 0.1 percent.

The small slip in Colorado was particularly notable as that state along with Texas recently passed through and surpassed pre-crisis peaks on the index.  Colorado established a new peak in July of $239 and has now fallen off of that level.  Texas, in contrast, set another new high in August, increasing 0.5 percent to $185.

Ten of the largest metropolitan areas had month-over-month increases of more than 1 percent.  This included six cities in Florida and two in Nevada.  Lakeland, Florida and Reno topped the list with increases of 1.5 percent each.  There were ten major metros where prices slipped 0.2 percent or more with the largest decreases in Colorado Springs (-0.6 percent), Kennewick, Washington (0.4 percent) and Spokane and Denver at -0.3 percent each.