CoreLogic, a leading provider of information, analytics and business services, today released its August Home Price Index (HPI) report. Home prices nationwide, including distressed sales, increased on a year-over-year basis by 4.6 percent in August 2012 compared to August 2011. This change represents the biggest year-over-year increase since July 2006. On a month-over-month basis, including distressed sales, home prices increased by 0.3 percent in August 2012 compared to July 2012*. The August 2012 figures mark the sixth consecutive increase in home prices nationally on both a year-over-year and month-over-month basis.  The HPI analysis from CoreLogic shows that all but six states are experiencing price gains.

Excluding distressed sales, home prices nationwide increased on a year-over-year basis by 4.9 percent in August 2012 compared to August 2011. On a month-over-month basis excluding distressed sales, home prices increased 1 percent in August 2012 compared to July 2012, also the sixth consecutive month-over-month increase. Distressed sales include short sales and real estate owned (REO) transactions.

The CoreLogic Pending HPI indicates that September 2012 home prices, including distressed sales, are expected to rise by 5 percent on a year-over-year basis from September 2011 and fall by 0.3 percent on a month-over-month basis from August 2012 as the summer buying season closes out. Excluding distressed sales, September 2012 house prices are poised to rise 6.3 percent year-over-year from September 2011 and by 0.6 percent month-over-month from August 2012. The CoreLogic Pending HPI is a proprietary and exclusive metric that provides the most current indication of trends in home prices. It is based on Multiple Listing Service (MLS) data that measure price changes in the most recent month.

“Again this month prices rose on a year-over-year basis and our expectation is for that to continue in September based on our pending HPI forecast,” said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic. “The housing markets gains are increasingly geographically diverse with only six states continuing to show declining prices.”

“Sustained economic recovery in the U.S. requires a healthy housing market. You cannot have a healthy housing market without price stabilization and ultimately home price appreciation,” said Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “Improving pricing trends over the past few months and our forecast for continued gains in September bode well for a progressive rebound in the residential housing market.”

Highlights as of August 2012:

• Including distressed sales, the five states with the highest home price appreciation were:  Arizona (+18.2 percent), Idaho (+10.4 percent), Nevada (+9.0 percent), Utah (+8.9 percent) and Hawaii (+8.0 percent).
• Including distressed sales, the five states with the greatest home price depreciation were: Rhode Island (-2.6 percent), Illinois (-2.3 percent), New Jersey (-1.4 percent), Alabama (-0.7 percent) and Connecticut (-0.5 percent).
• Excluding distressed sales, the five states with the highest home price appreciation were: Arizona (+13.0 percent), Utah (+10.0 percent), Montana (+8.8 percent), Idaho (+8.6 percent) and North Dakota (+7.7 percent).
• Excluding distressed sales, this month only three states posted home price depreciation: Rhode Island (-1.7 percent), New Jersey (-1.4 percent), Alabama (-0.2 percent).
• Including distressed transactions, the peak-to-current change in the national HPI (from April 2006 to August 2012) was -26.7 percent.  Excluding distressed transactions, the peak-to-current change in the HPI for the same period was -19.9 percent.
• The five states with the largest peak-to-current declines, including distressed transactions, are Nevada (-54.7 percent), Florida (-44.3 percent), Arizona (-42.0 percent), California (-37.7 percent) and Michigan (-36.5 percent).
• Of the top 100 Core Based Statistical Areas (CBSAs) measured by population, 20 are showing year-over-year declines in August, six fewer than in July. 

*July 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.

Full-month August 2012 national data can be found at http://www.corelogic.com/HPIAugust2012.

Methodology

The CoreLogic HPI incorporates more than 30 years’ worth of repeat sales transactions, representing more than 65 million observations sourced from CoreLogic industry-leading property information and its securities and servicing databases. The CoreLogic HPI provides a multi-tier market evaluation based on price, time between sales, property type, loan type (conforming vs. nonconforming) and distressed sales. The CoreLogic HPI is a repeat-sales index that tracks increases and decreases in sales prices for the same homes over time, including single-family attached and single-family detached homes, which provides a more accurate "constant-quality" view of pricing trends than basing analysis on all home sales. The CoreLogic HPI provides the most comprehensive set of monthly home price indices available covering 6,768 ZIP codes (58 percent of total U.S. population), 620 Core Based Statistical Areas (86 percent of total U.S. population) and 1,183 counties (84 percent of total U.S. population) located in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.