House price index

The US Federal Housing Finance Agency (formerly Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight a.k.a. OFHEO) publishes the HPI index, a quarterly broad measure of the movement of single-family house prices.

The HPI is a weighted, repeat-sales index, meaning that it measures average price changes in repeat sales or refinancings on the same properties in 363 metropolises. This information is obtained by reviewing repeat mortgage transactions on single-family properties whose mortgages have been purchased or securitized by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac since January 1975.

Since the HPI index only includes houses with mortgages within the conforming amount limits, the index has a natural cap and does not account for jumbo mortgages.

The HPI was developed in conjunction with OFHEO's (now FHFA) responsibilities as a regulator of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It is used to measure the adequacy of their capital against the value of their assets, which are primarily home mortgages.

On July 30, 2008 OFHEO became part of the new Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA). The index is now termed the FHFA HPI.

The Case–Shiller Real Home Price Index

The Case-Shiller index prices are measured monthly and track repeat sales of houses using a modified version of the weighted-repeat sales methodology proposed by Karl Case and Robert Shiller and Allan Weiss. This means that, to a large extent, it is able to adjust for the quality of the homes sold, unlike simple averages.

As a monthly tracking index, the Case-Shiller index has a long lag time. Typically, it takes about 2 months for S&P to publish the results, as opposed to 1 month for most other monthly indices and indicators. Specific indexes are available for specific metropolitan areas, and composite indexes for the top 20 and top 10 metro areas, and nationwide.

FNC Inc. publishes the Residential Price Index, which is based on data collected from public records blended with data from real-time appraisals of property and neighborhood attributes. The RPI is the mortgage industry's first hedonic price index for residential properties. The RPI is constructed to gauge price movement among non-distressed home sales, and excludes sales of foreclosed properties.[1]

As a monthly tracking index, the RPI has a lag time of about two months. Specific indices are available for specific metropolitan areas, and composite indices are available for the top 10, 20, 30, and 100[2] metro areas. The RPI is also available at the zip code level and can be constructed to track price trends for specific characteristics (e.g., ranch-style house, colonial-style house, etc.) since preferences can change over time.

HouseCanary publishes monthly HPI data at block, block group, zipcode, metro division and metropolitan levels. These indices include forecasts up to 3 years into the future. [3]

• In June 2016 the UK House Price Index (UK HPI)[4] was launched as a collaboration between the Office for National Statistics, HM Land Registry, Registers of Scotland and Land and Property Services Northern Ireland. The index is calculated using land registration data (such as that held by HM Land Registry). The UK HPI release provides comprehensive information on the change in house prices on a monthly and annual basis. It also includes analysis by geography, type of buyer, type of dwelling, property status (whether the property is a new build or not) and funding status (cash or mortgage). Several guidance documents[5] are published alongside the release explaining its methodology and the difference between the different sources of official house price statistics.
• From 2012 to 2016 the Office for National Statistics produced a monthly House Price Index (HPI) release which was calculated using mortgage financed transactions collected via the Regulated Mortgage Survey by the Council of Mortgage Lenders. These covered the majority of mortgage lenders in the UK. This release was replaced by the UK House Price Index in June 2016[6].
• Historically, HM Land Registry also published a separate house price index calculated by Calnea Analytics. It used the HM Land Registry’s own data, which consists of the transaction records of all residential property sales in England and Wales. It uses Repeat Sales Regression. This release was replaced by the UK House Price Index in June 2016.
• DCLG House Price Index [7]by the Department of Communities and Local Government used the mix-adjusted method, which is based on weighted averages. The data used in this HPI was mortgage completion data supplied by a few large lenders. DCLG handed the production of this index to the Office for National Statistics in 2012
• A House Price Index used to be produced by the Department for the Environment.

• The Nationwide House Price Index and Halifax House Price Index use Hedonic regression (also known as the characteristics based method) using their own datasets compiled from their mortgage lending. These indices have a longer time-series than the Governmental HPIs.