Home Price Appreciation Decelerating on Average; Lots of Regional Variation

Black Knight Financial Services (formerly Lender Processing Services) reports that home values in the U.S. as of December remained within 14 percent of the peak reached in 2006.  Measured by Black Knight's Home Price Index (HPI) the national single family home price was $232,000 in January, unchanged from December and 8.0 percent above the $215,000 HPI in January 2013.  Year over year price appreciation slowed by 0.4 percent.

The pace of appreciation varies greatly by state.  Prices in California saw the best year-over-year growth (+14.8%) among the 20 largest states while New York experienced the best month-over-month gains in that same cohort (+0.6 percent).  

Ohio led the field heading in the other direction, with the fastest rate of depreciation (-0.9 percent) for a state and for a metro area (-1.1 percent in Cleveland). Also in contrast to California, Ohio only gained 3.1 percent year-over-year, but there's a catch.  Whereas California remains 24.7 percent away from the 2006 price peak, Ohio is only 12.7 percent away--outpacing the national average of 14 percent.

Other states are even closer to previous peaks.  These include Colorado ($256k vs $258k peak), New York ($329k vs $342k peak), and Texas ($186k vs $187k peak).  Pennsylvania, Tennessee, and Massachusetts were all within 10% as well.

Several states were farther away from 2006 peaks than California in percentage terms.  These include Florida (-34.1 percent), Arizona (-31.6 percent), and Illinois (-24.3 percent).

Black Knight bases its HPI on a repeat sales analysis of home prices from the relevant month's residential real estate transactions combined with its loan-level databases.  The data covers 18,500 U.S. ZIP codes and takes into account price discounts for REO and short sales.