Home prices rise 7 percent year-to-year

Home prices increased 1.6 percent from February to March this year.

This marks an increase of 7.1 percent in home prices from March 2016 to March 2017, according to the latest CoreLogic’s U.S. Home Price Insights Report. The report suggests home prices will rise 0.6 percent in April’s report, and grow 4.9 percent by March 2018.  For the past 62 months, home prices have grown year-to-year.

“Home prices posted strong gains in March 2017, and the CoreLogic Home Price Index is only 2.8 percent from its 2006 peak,” said Dr. Frank Nothaft, chief economist for CoreLogic. “With a forecasted increase of almost 5 percent over the next 12 months, the index is expected to reach the previous peak during the second half of this year. Prices in more than half the country have already surpassed their previous peaks, and almost 20 percent of metropolitan areas are now at their price peaks. Nationally, price growth has gradually accelerated over the past half-year, while rent growth for single-family rental homes has slowly decelerated over the same period, according to the CoreLogic Single-Family Rental Index, recording a 3 percent rise over the year through March.”

Fifteen states hit new highs in home prices this month, while two showed negative home appreciation. CoreLogic predicts that prices will hit a new peak in August of this year.

In Pennsylvania, home prices rose .1 percent from February to March, and 3 percent from March 2016 to March 2017. The report predicts prices in the commonwealth will rise .5 percent month-to-month, and 4.1 percent year-to-year.

“A potent mix of strong job gains, household formation, population growth and still-attractive mortgage rates in the face of tight inventories are fueling a continuing surge in home prices across the U.S.,” said Frank Martell, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “Price gains were broad-based with 90 percent of metropolitan areas posting year-over-year gains. Major metropolitan areas were especially hot with CoreLogic data indicating that four of the largest 10 markets are now overvalued.”