Average home prices rose 5.4% year-over-year in the second quarter.

Casting aside trepidation generated by COVID-19, it seems a growing number of Americans are feeling positive about homeownership, as indicated by an upward trend in U.S. house prices, which rose 5.4% from the second quarter of last year to the same period in 2020, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) House Price Index (HPI). In the second quarter of 2019, they spiked 0.8%. From May, FHFA’s seasonally adjusted monthly index for June ballooned 0.9%. House prices have escalated for 36 weeks in a row--dating back to September 2011, and have ticked up in all 50 states and the District of Columbia between the second quarters of 2019 and 2020. Dr. Lynn Fisher, Deputy Director of the Division of Research and Statistics at FHFA, commented -- “Although house prices fell slightly in May relative to April, in June prices rebounded by 0.9 percent over the month as local economies re-opened and transactions picked up again. Four Census Divisions showed strong early summer gains with month-over-month growth of one percent or more in June.”

Source: DSNews