What is a home price index?

A home price index measures how home prices change over time across many sales, not what any one home is worth. The federal government's is the FHFA House Price Index, a collection of indexes from the Federal Housing Finance Agency that measures changes in single-family home values back to the mid-1970s, for all 50 states and over 400 cities.

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Updated

Where you’ll see the word

  • FHFA's monthly release

    FHFA estimates a separate index value for each month, and every three months publishes a fuller quarterly report that adds states and metro areas.

  • A news headline

    FHFA's quarterly release headlines give the one-year and one-quarter changes: percentages, not prices.

  • Our median price page

    The Census Bureau's median sale price of new houses, on our indicator page, is the other way of reading prices: a dollar figure.

The index and its versions

  • FHFA House Price Index, FHFA HPI The Federal Housing Finance Agency's own name for its index. FHFA
  • Purchase-Only index FHFA's flagship version. FHFA
  • All-Transactions index The broader version, which adds appraisal values from refinance mortgages to the purchase-only sample. FHFA
  • Constant-quality house price index How FHFA describes the HPI, because it compares the same properties over time. FHFA

What a home price index means for you

FHFA bases the HPI on repeat transactions. It isn't adjusted for inflation; the changes are in nominal terms.

Which version you're reading matters. The flagship FHFA HPI uses seasonally adjusted, purchase-only data from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac; additional indexes use other data, including mortgages insured by the Federal Housing Administration and real property records. A Distress-Free version removes short sales and sales of bank-owned properties from the transactions used to estimate it.

For your own state, the quarterly report is the place. FHFA says the HPI offers insights at the national, census division, state, metro area, county, ZIP code and census tract levels; the 2026 Q2 release names the states with the highest annual appreciation and the biggest decline, and the downloadable data has every state.

Questions about home price indexes

Is a home price index the same as the median home price?

No. A median is the middle price of the homes that sold in a period, so it moves when the mix of homes changes. FHFA says measures like that reflect changes in both the prices and the composition or quantity of housing, whereas the HPI is designed to isolate changes in house prices.

Why do past index values change?

FHFA revises historical HPI estimates as additional transaction data become available. Mortgages purchased with longer lags, including seasoned loans, keep generating revisions, particularly for the most recent periods.

What does an index value of 100 mean?

The base period. FHFA sets each census division index equal to 100 in its relevant base period and works the series backward and forward from there, so a later reading shows how far prices have moved since that period, not a dollar figure.

Our pages that use it

Related terms

  • Median Home PriceThe middle sale price when home sale prices are ordered from lowest to highest.
  • AppraisalA professional opinion of a property's market value based on its features and comparable sales.
  • Loan-to-Value Ratio (LTV)A mortgage balance divided by the home's appraised value, expressed as a percentage.
  • Home EquityThe difference between a home's current value and the amount owed against it.

Sources and method

This page uses none of our own data. The definition, the versions, the geography and the revision practice come from the Federal Housing Finance Agency's HPI page, FAQ and 2026 Q2 release, opened on Oct 22, 2026.

  • Federal Housing Finance Agency · FHFA House Price Index, at fhfa.gov
  • Federal Housing Finance Agency · House Price Index frequently asked questions, at fhfa.gov
  • Federal Housing Finance Agency · U.S. house prices rise 2.1 percent year over year, up 0.3 percent quarter over quarter (2026 Q2 release), at fhfa.gov
  • Federal Housing Finance Agency · HPI datasets, at fhfa.gov

We write with assistance from AI tools. Figures come from the data and sources named on this page.