FHFA: Steady Quarterly Home Price Gains Continue in Q2

Home prices in the second quarter continued to see strong upward momentum, according to the ""Federal Housing Finance Agency's"":http://www.fhfa.gov/ (FHFA) House Price Index (HPI).

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The purchase-only, seasonally adjusted HPI--calculated using home sales price information from mortgages sold to or guaranteed by the GSEs--rose 2.1 percent quarter-over- [COLUMN_BREAK]

quarter, marking the eight consecutive quarterly increase. In June alone, the index was up 0.7 percent month-over-month.

""The housing market experienced one of its strongest quarters since the boom in the middle of the last decade,"" said FHFA principal economist Andrew Leventis.

Compared with the same quarter last year, home prices increased 7.2 percent, while prices of other goods and services inched up only 1.0 percent. According to FHFA, the inflation-adjusted price of homes rose approximately 6.2 percent over the latest year.

Of the nine census divisions, the Pacific region posted the strongest increase in the most recent quarter, seeing a 4.6 percent quarterly gain. Prices were weakest in the East South Central division, increasing only 0.9 percent quarter-over-quarter.

FHFA's expanded-data HPI--a metric introduced in August 2011 that adds transaction information from county recorder offices and the Federal Housing Administration--rose 2.4 percent over the latest quarter. Over the last four quarters, that index has risen 7.5 percent.