- Twelve-month home-price growth rate was slowest since August 2012
- Annual average price growth in 2018 was 5.8 percent, with annual average price growth forecast to slow in 2019 to 3.4 percent
- After peaking in March, December marked the ninth consecutive month of decelerating annual HPI growth in the United States
CoreLogic® (NYSE: CLGX), a leading global property information, analytics and data-enabled solutions provider, today released the CoreLogic Home Price Index (HPI™) and HPI Forecast™ for December 2018, which shows home prices rose both year over year and month over month. Home prices increased nationally by 4.7 percent year over year from December 2017. On a month-over-month basis, prices increased by 0.1 percent in December 2018. (November 2018 data was revised. Revisions with public records data are standard, and to ensure accuracy, CoreLogic incorporates the newly released public data to provide updated results each month.)
Looking ahead, the CoreLogic HPI Forecast indicates home prices will increase by 4.6 percent on a year-over-year basis from December 2018 to December 2019. Comparing the annual average HPI and HPI forecast for 2018 and 2019, average price growth is forecasted to slow from 5.8 percent to 3.4 percent. On a month-over-month basis, home prices are expected to decrease by 1 percent from December 2018 to January 2019. The CoreLogic HPI Forecast is a projection of home prices calculated using the CoreLogic HPI and other economic variables. Values are derived from state-level forecasts by weighting indices according to the number of owner-occupied households for each state.
“Higher mortgage rates slowed home sales and price growth during the second half of 2018,” said Dr. Frank Nothaft, chief economist for CoreLogic. “Annual price growth peaked in March and averaged 6.4 percent during the first six months of the year. In the second half of 2018, growth moderated to 5.2 percent. For 2019, we are forecasting an average annual price growth of 3.4 percent.”
According to the CoreLogic Market Condition Indicators (MCI), an analysis of housing values in the country’s 100 largest metropolitan areas based on housing stock, 33 percent of metropolitan areas have an overvalued housing market as of December 2018. The MCI analysis categorizes home prices in individual markets as undervalued, at value or overvalued, by comparing home prices to their long-run, sustainable levels, which are supported by local market fundamentals (such as disposable income). Additionally, as of December 2018, 27 percent of the top 100 metropolitan areas were undervalued, and 40 percent were at value.
When looking at only the top 50 markets based on housing stock, 40 percent were overvalued, 18 percent were undervalued and 42 percent were at value. The MCI analysis defines an overvalued housing market as one in which home prices are at least 10 percent above the long-term, sustainable level. An undervalued housing market is one in which home prices are at least 10 percent below the sustainable level.
In 2018, CoreLogic together with RTi Research of Norwalk, Connecticut, conducted an extensive survey measuring consumer-housing sentiment, combining consumer and property insights. The study assessed attitudes toward homeownership and the driving force behind the decision to buy or rent a home. When renters were asked how interested they were in owning a home or residence, 36 percent felt homeownership would allow them to fulfill a dream and provide a place to raise a family. Conversely, 45 percent of those surveyed claimed they could not afford to buy or take on the responsibility of ownership at this time. As home-price increases cool while incomes rise, we expect buyer affordability to improve and home sales to pick up.
“The slowdown in the rate of home price appreciation reflects the impact of inventory shortages and growing affordability issues in many markets,” said Frank Martell, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “On the positive side, if home-price growth continues to moderate, interest rates remain stable and household incomes rise in 2019, it could help renters and first-time buyers to take the plunge and realize the dream of owning a home.”
The next CoreLogic HPI press release, featuring January 2019 data, will be issued on Tuesday, March 5, 2019 at 8:00 a.m. ET.
Methodology
The CoreLogic HPI™ is built on industry-leading public record, servicing and securities real-estate databases and incorporates more than 40 years of repeat-sales transactions for analyzing home price trends. Generally released on the first Tuesday of each month with an average five-week lag, the CoreLogic HPI is designed to provide an early indication of home price trends by market segment and for the “Single-Family Combined” tier, representing the most comprehensive set of properties, including all sales for single-family attached and single-family detached properties. The indices are fully revised with each release and employ techniques to signal turning points sooner. The CoreLogic HPI provides measures for multiple market segments, referred to as tiers, based on property type, price, time between sales, loan type (conforming vs. non-conforming) and distressed sales. Broad national coverage is available from the national level down to ZIP Code, including non-disclosure states.
CoreLogic HPI Forecasts™ are based on a two-stage, error-correction econometric model that combines the equilibrium home price—as a function of real disposable income per capita—with short-run fluctuations caused by market momentum, mean-reversion, and exogenous economic shocks like changes in the unemployment rate. With a 30-year forecast horizon, CoreLogic HPI Forecasts project CoreLogic HPI levels for two tiers — “Single-Family Combined” (both attached and detached) and “Single-Family Combined Excluding Distressed Sales.” As a companion to the CoreLogic HPI Forecasts, Stress-Testing Scenarios align with Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR) national scenarios to project five years of home prices under baseline, adverse and severely adverse scenarios at state, Core Based Statistical Area (CBSA) and ZIP Code levels. The forecast accuracy represents a 95-percent statistical confidence interval with a +/- 2 percent margin of error for the index.
About The 2018 CoreLogic Consumer Housing Sentiment Study
Nationwide survey of 3001 renters and homeowners conducted in first quarter of 2018 by CoreLogic together with RTi Research. The survey has a sampling error of +/- 1.8 percent at the total respondent level with a 95 percent confidence level.
About RTi Research
RTi Research is an innovative, global market research and brand strategy consultancy headquartered in Norwalk, CT. Founded in 1979, RTi has been consistently recognized by the American Marketing Association as one of the top 50 U.S. insights companies. The company serves a broad base of leading firms in Financial Services, Consumer Goods, and Pharmaceuticals as well as partnering with leading academic centers of excellence.
Source: CoreLogic
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About CoreLogic
CoreLogic (NYSE: CLGX) is a leading global property information, analytics and data-enabled solutions provider. The company’s combined data from public, contributory and proprietary sources includes over 4.5 billion records spanning more than 50 years, providing detailed coverage of property, mortgages and other encumbrances, consumer credit, tenancy, location, hazard risk and related performance information. The markets CoreLogic serves include real estate and mortgage finance, insurance, capital markets, and the public sector. CoreLogic delivers value to clients through unique data, analytics, workflow technology, advisory and managed services. Clients rely on CoreLogic to help identify and manage growth opportunities, improve performance and mitigate risk. Headquartered in Irvine, Calif., CoreLogic operates in North America, Western Europe and Asia Pacific. For more information, please visit www-corelogic-com.corelogicstg.wpengine.com.
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