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Unhindered by winter weather, the home price recovery pressed on in January as ""CoreLogic's"":http://www.corelogic.com/ home price index (HPI) rose nearly 10 percent year-over-year.
[IMAGE]When including distressed sales, January prices were up 9.7 percent from a year ago, representing the biggest increase since April 2006, CoreLogic reported Tuesday.
From December 2012 to January 2013, prices managed to show positive growth and inched up by 0.7 percent.
[COLUMN_BREAK]CoreLogic's pending HPI projects another 9.7 percent yearly increase in February and a 0.3 percent monthly decrease.
""The HPI showed strong growth during the typically slow winter season,"" said Mark Fleming, chief economist for CoreLogic. ""With these gains, the housing market is poised to enter the spring selling season on sound footing. The improvements are materializing across the country, with all but Delaware and Illinois showing increasing HPI and 15 states within 10 percent of their peak values.""
According to the data provider, Illinois saw prices drop by 0.4 percent, while Delaware posted a 0.1 percent decrease.
Anand Nallathambi, president and CEO of CoreLogic, added, ""Many states across the western U.S. and along the East Coast saw average price gains of more than 6 percent, which is likely to boost home sale activity into the first half of 2013.""
The top five states that led annual home price gains when including distressed sales were Arizona (+20.1 percent), Nevada (+17.4 percent), Idaho (+14.9 percent), California (+14.1 percent) and Hawaii (+14.0 percent).
CoreLogic also measured performance among the top 100 metros and found 92 experienced yearly gains, up from 87 in December.
