House Price Appreciation by State and Metro Area: The First Quarter of 2024

Despite higher mortgage rates, limited resale inventory and strong growth in demand continued to put upward pressure on house prices. House price appreciation was recorded in all 50 states and the District of Columbia.

According to the quarterly all-transactions House Price Index (HPI) released by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), U.S. house prices rose 6.3% between the first quarter of 2023 and the first quarter of 2024. Nationally, house prices have experienced positive annual appreciation for each quarter since the third quarter of 2012.

The quarterly FHFA HPI not only reports house prices at the national level, but it also provides insights about house price fluctuations at the state and metro area levels. The FHFA HPI used in this article is the all-transactions index, measuring average price changes in repeat sales or refinancings on the same single-family properties.

Over the past four years, house prices have increased dramatically, and are much higher than they were before the pandemic. Nationally, house prices rose 47.7% between the first quarter of 2020 and the first quarter of 2024. At the state level, Florida led the way with the highest price appreciation (+67.0%) due to strong population growth and limited housing supply. It was followed by Maine with a 63.6% gain, and Tennessee with a 61.7% gain. Meanwhile, the District of Columbia had the lowest price growth (+14.6%) as people moved away from the high-density areas and toward more affordable suburbs.

House prices have changed unevenly across U.S. metro areas, from the first quarter of 2020 to the first quarter of 2024. House price appreciation ranged from 12.2% to 81.1%. More than half of the metro areas saw house prices rise by more than the national price growth rate of 47.7%. House prices in the South and the West have grown faster than the prices in the Midwest and Northeast. Within the top 20 metro areas that had the highest house price appreciation, 13 metro areas are located in the South Atlantic Division and four in the East South Central Division, while none of them were in the Midwest.

By: Jing Fu I Eye on Housing I June 6, 2024