Black Knight Notes Home Price Decline

The Home Price Index (HPI) report issued this week by Black Knight Financial Services shows the December national index at $241,000, a -0.1 percent change from November.  The HPI has increased by 4.6 percent since December 2013, and is now 10.2 percent below the peak of $268,000 it stablished in June 2006.

The largest monthly increases were in New York and Colorado, each of which saw its HPI increase by 0.5 percent.  Colorado has been establishing new price peaks regularly for over a year and the December increase brought New York to within 0.6 of its pre-crisis high.  These two were followed by Oregon, Florida, Oklahoma, and Arizona, each with gains of 0.3 percent. 

The biggest losers were Michigan and Connecticut with month-over-month changes of -1.2 percent and -1.1 percent respectively followed by Vermont at - 0.8 percent and New Hampshire and Pennsylvania at 0.6 percent.

Top-performing metros were dominated by Florida.  Cape Coral gained 0.9 percent followed by The Villages, Sarasota, and Naples and joined by Denver, all at 0.7 percent.  Seven large metros lost 1 percent or more during the month and this list was dominate led by New England.  New Haven and Detroit led, both at -1.5 percent followed by Hartford and Norwich at -1.1 percent.

The Black Knight uses its property and loan-level databases to produce a repeat sales analysis of home prices in more than 18,500 U.S. Zip codes.  The company's HPI represents the price of non-distressed sales by taking into account price discounts for REO and short sales.