U.S. home prices in June 2009 Continue Upward Trend
The FHFA price index measures more accurately house price changes through time than simple averages because it controls for changes in the quality mix of the sample of transacted properties from period to period. According to this index, seasonally-adjusted home prices in June 2009 rose 0.5% following an increase of 0.6% percent in May. On an annual basis, home prices in June 2009 were still below their June 2008 levels in all divisions with the Pacific and Mountain divisions, posting the highest declines of 11.1% and 10%, respectively, while house prices in West South Central and East South Central posted minor declines of 0.1% and 0.3%, respectively. Despite the increases in home prices in June and May of 2009, these increases were no enough to offset previous declines. Thus the average housing prices in the second quarter of 2009 registered a slight decrease of 0.7% compared to the first quarter of 2009. This decline is slightly larger than the decline of 0.5% registered in the previous quarter. On an annual basis the seasonally-adjusted prices fell 6.1 percent, which represents deceleration of the annual rate of decline from the previous quarter which was 7.1%.
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