The FNC Residential Price Index was released April 15, indicating that home prices throughout the nation inched up in February by 0.1 percent. Compared with last year, home prices increased 5.7 percent even after unexpectedly dropping in January.
“The spring housing market appears to be on solid ground amid continually improving labor market and rising home sales,” said Yanling Mayer, FNC‘s housing economist and director of research.
“Psychologically and economically, people prefer to buy homes when prices are rising than when they are falling, so a continued recovery of home prices is encouraging to both first-time and trade-up buyers.”
The volume of foreclosure sales were down in February on a yearly basis but up a bit over January.
In order to measure the health of local housing markets and “unsmoothed home price trends,” the FNC National Residential Price Indices were created. The index is an aggregate price index of 100 major metro areas throughout the nation.
FNC’s RPI “blends public records of residential sales prices with real-time appraisals of property and neighborhood attributes.”
In DC, the FNC Price Index in February increased 0.8 percent over January, ranking it one of the most improved markets on a monthly basis. Annually, though, DC was about average with an increase of 4.6 percent
