Nationwide
This is the eleventh straight monthly rise, and it's the biggest gain since April 2006. On the month, home prices were up 0.7 percent.
Ex-distressed sales, home prices were up 9 percent on the year, and 1.8 percent on the month.
“The HPI showed strong growth during the typically slow winter season,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic. “With these gains, the housing market is poised to enter the spring selling season on sound footing.”
Paul Diggle at Capital Economics thinks that concerns of "overstretched" home prices are overblown since housing is still "20 percent undervalued relative to incomes and 5 percent undervalued relative to rents".
"Indeed, with only 4.6 months of supply of unsold stock on the market in January, well below the long-run average of 7 months, we expect near double-digit gains in prices until at least the middle of the year," he adds.
Here are some details from the report:
- The five states with the highest increase in home prices including distressed sales were Arizona with a 20.1 percent rise; Nevada, a 17.4 percent rise; Idaho, a 14.9 percent rise; California, a 14.1 percent rise; and Hawaii, a 14.0 percent rise. Only Illinois and Delaware saw home prices decrease.
- Ex-distressed sales, the five states with the highest increase in home prices were Nevada at 17.5 percent, Arizona, 16.5 percent; California, 14.5 percent; Hawaii, 13.9 percent; and Idaho, 13.2 percent. Ex-distressed sales, no states reported a decline in home prices.
- The peak to current change in home prices (April 2006 - January 2013), including distressed homes, was 26.4 percent.
- The pending index showed home prices including distressed sales should rise 9.7 percent year-over-year in February, and fall 0.3 percent month-over-month.
Here is the trajectory of home prices since 2002:
