The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) Price Index edged up 0.2% m/m (5.0% y/y) in October following an upwardly revised 0.7% m/m gain in September (initially 0.6%). The 5.0% y/y increase in October marked a sharp slowdown from the 6.7% increase for all of 2018. In general, the y/y pace of house price increase has slowed over the past 18 months from a recent peak of 7.4% in February 2018. Over the last six months, prices increased at a 4.4% annual rate.

For the nine census divisions, seasonally adjusted monthly house price changes from September 2019 to October 2019 ranged from -0.5% m/m (+4.0% y/y) in the East North Central division to +0.7% m/m in the West South Central and East South Central divisions (+5.8% y/y and +4.6% y/y, respectively). The changes from a year ago were positive for each census division, ranging from +3.5% y/y in the New England division to +6.7% y/y in the Mountain division.

The FHFA house price index is a weighted purchase-only index that measures average price changes in repeat sales of the same property. An associated quarterly index includes refinancings on the same kinds of properties. The indexes are based on transactions involving conforming, conventional mortgages purchased or securitized by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Only mortgage transactions on single-family properties are included. The FHFA data are available in Haver's USECON database.