Year over year, home prices grew by 12.1 percent in April, representing the largest gain in over seven years, according to the Home Price Index Report released by financial and property analyst CoreLogic.
Month-over-month prices rose 3.2 percent in April, and home prices are expected to rise by an even greater percent in May.
More good news from the report: Excluding sales of distressed properties, all 50 states reported year-over-year price gains for two consecutive months. Additionally, 33 large metro areas around the country reported double digit increases.
“Increasing demand for new and existing homes, coupled with low inventory, has created a virtuous cycle for price gains,” says Mark Fleming, chief economist at CoreLogic.
The latest National Association of Realtors Confidence Index finds that real estate agents around the United States are also increasingly optimistic about the future of home prices. Of the 50,000 agents surveyed in the Confidence Index, 86 percent report constant or increasing prices in their market, up from 58 percent reporting the same the previous year.
Because of the increased demand, houses are selling more quickly, even at higher prices. Real estate agents report the median number of days on the market for properties is 46 days, compared to 91 days one year prior.
The Consumer Price Index also reports that 95 percent of respondents expect constant or higher prices in the next year. The median price gain expectation from realtors for the coming year is 4.9 percent.
Although housing prices are still off their peak, which occurred in April 2006, home buyers and sellers are beginning to see the hard times caused by the 2008 housing bubble as a distant memory. Wells Fargo CFO Tim Sloan recently told Bloomberg television that although prices are rising, the country is in no danger of a repeat housing bubble, as lenders are now maintaining credit standards that were absent in the years before the bubble.
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