CoreLogic, a leading global property information, analytics and data-enabled solutions provider, today released the CoreLogic Home Price Index (HPI™) and HPI Forecast™ for January 2021.
2020 was a landmark year for the housing market. Factors such as record-low mortgage rates encouraged first-time homebuyers to dip their toe into the housing market and allowed home price growth to remain strong, despite economic uncertainty. The momentum continued into 2021, with home price growth experiencing its first double-digit annual appreciation since November 2013 in January at 10%. However, as we look forward to the rest of 2021, we may expect to see challenges for some prospective homeowners.
A survey from CoreLogic, conducted in February 2021, found that nearly 76% of U.S. non-homeowners, aged 18 or older, say that they have no plans to purchase a home within the next six months. When asked what was the biggest deterrent, 43% of respondents cited affordability constraints — specifically, not having enough money for a down payment or mortgage — which could be an additional factor keeping them from purchasing.
“Record-low mortgage rates were a significant driving force behind last year’s rebound in housing market activity,” said Frank Martell, president and CEO of CoreLogic. “However, heavy competition for the few houses on the market drove home prices to historic highs, and mortgage rates are no longer enough to sway the affordability challenges for consumers. While new construction may help balance home prices towards the end of 2021, we may expect to see demand slow in the medium-term.”
Top Takeaways:
- Nationally, home prices increased 10% in January 2021, compared with January 2020. On a month-over-month basis, home prices increased by 0.9% compared to December 2020.
- January 2021 gains across all of the 10 select metropolitan areas (Table 1) surpassed their January 2020 levels.
- Metro areas where affordability constraints are prevalent continue to persist as prices rise. For instance, in January, home prices in San Diego increased 11% year over year and are forecasted to increase an additional 9.6% over the next 12 months.
- At the state level, Idaho and Montana had the strongest price growth in January, up 21%, 17.4%, respectively, while Maine and Indiana tied for third place at 15.3% growth each.
“Despite first-time buyers driving high demand, entry-level homes remain in short supply,” said Dr. Frank Nothaft, chief economist at CoreLogic. “Homes priced below 75% of the local median price had 14% annual appreciation, negating most of the benefits of record-low mortgage rates. When interest rates rise, the affordability squeeze for first-time buyers will become even more of a challenge.”
The next CoreLogic HPI press release, featuring February 2021 data, will be issued on April 6, 2021 at 8:00 a.m. ET.
Methodology
The CoreLogic HPI™ is built on industry-leading public record, servicing and securities real-estate databases and incorporates more than 45 years of repeat-sales transactions for analyzing home price trends. Generally released on the first Tuesday of each month with an average five-week lag, the CoreLogic HPI is designed to provide an early indication of home price trends by market segment and for the “Single-Family Combined” tier, representing the most comprehensive set of properties, including all sales for single-family attached and single-family detached properties. The indices are fully revised with each release and employ techniques to signal turning points sooner. The CoreLogic HPI provides measures for multiple market segments, referred to as tiers, based on property type, price, time between sales, loan type (conforming vs. non-conforming) and distressed sales. Broad national coverage is available from the national level down to ZIP Code, including non-disclosure states.
CoreLogic HPI Forecasts™ are based on a two-stage, error-correction econometric model that combines the equilibrium home price—as a function of real disposable income per capita—with short-run fluctuations caused by market momentum, mean-reversion, and exogenous economic shocks like changes in the unemployment rate. With a 30-year forecast horizon, CoreLogic HPI Forecasts project CoreLogic HPI levels for two tiers — “Single-Family Combined” (both attached and detached) and “Single-Family Combined Excluding Distressed Sales.” As a companion to the CoreLogic HPI Forecasts, Stress-Testing Scenarios align with Comprehensive Capital Analysis and Review (CCAR) national scenarios to project five years of home prices under baseline, adverse and severely adverse scenarios at state, metropolitan areas and ZIP Code levels. The forecast accuracy represents a 95% statistical confidence interval with a +/- 2% margin of error for the index.
About Market Risk Indicator
Market Risk Indicators are a subscription-based analytics solution that provide monthly updates on the overall “health” of housing markets across the country. CoreLogic data scientists combine world-class analytics with detailed economic and housing data to help determine the likelihood of a housing bubble burst in 392 major metros and all 50 states. Market Risk Indicators is a multi-phase regression model that provides a probability score (from 1 to 100) on the likelihood of two scenarios per metro: a >10% price reduction and a ≤ 10% price reduction. The higher the score, the higher the risk of a price reduction.
About the Market Condition Indicators
As part of the CoreLogic HPI and HPI Forecasts offerings, Market Condition Indicators are available for all metropolitan areas and identify individual markets as “overvalued”, “at value”, or “undervalued.” These indicators are derived from the long-term fundamental values, which are a function of real disposable income per capita. Markets are labeled as overvalued if the current home price indexes exceed their long-term values by greater than 10%, and undervalued where the long-term values exceed the index levels by greater than 10%.
About the CoreLogic Consumer Housing Sentiment Survey
In February 2021, 3,699 adults in the U.S., with an estimated 1,020 non-homeowners and 2,679 current homeowners, were surveyed by CoreLogic through survey platform YouGov. The survey provides a pulse on U.S. housing market dynamics and purchase intentions. Fieldwork was undertaken between February 16-22, 2021. The survey was carried out online. The figures have been weighted and are representative of all US adults (aged 18+).
Source: CoreLogic
The data provided are for use only by the primary recipient or the primary recipient’s publication or broadcast. This data may not be resold, republished or licensed to any other source, including publications and sources owned by the primary recipient’s parent company without prior written permission from CoreLogic. Any CoreLogic data used for publication or broadcast, in whole or in part, must be sourced as coming from CoreLogic, a data and analytics company. For use with broadcast or web content, the citation must directly accompany first reference of the data.
CoreLogic (NYSE: CLGX), the leading provider of property insights and solutions, promotes a healthy housing market and thriving communities. Through its enhanced property data solutions, services and technologies, CoreLogic enables real estate professionals, financial institutions, insurance carriers, government agencies and other housing market participants to help millions of people find, buy and protect their homes.
