Lynchburg, VA Federal Housing Finance Agency Home Price Index (FHFA HPI)

The Lynchburg, VA, Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) House Price Index (HPI) is a weighted, repeat-sales index that measures average price changes in repeat sales or refinancings on the same properties. The index was created in order to be a more accurate measure of house price changes than the existing Case-Shiller Index. The FHFA HPI is a broad measure of home prices in the Lynchburg area and is designed to provide insight into trends in house prices and valuations.

As of December 2016, the FHFA HPI for Lynchburg was 176.9, up from its peak of 179.6 in September 2016 and down from its all-time high of 180.4 in June 2016. Home prices in Lynchburg have been on the rise since bottoming out at 168.1 in December 2015. The FHFA HPI is calculated using data from Freddie Mac's Primary Mortgage Market Survey® (PMMS®), which covers about 75 percent of U.S. home mortgages originated by banks and other private lenders including credit unions, thrifts, and mortgage bankers not captured by Freddie Mac's sample.*

According to the FHFA HPI report released earlier this year, home prices nationwide increased by 5.8 percent between December 2015 and December 2016.* This marks the fourth consecutive year of positive annual growth for home prices as measured by the FHFA HPI.* In addition, all nine census divisions saw increases in their annual rates of home price growth between 2015 and 2016.* Of these divisions, Mountain had the highest rate of growth at 8 percent followed by New England at 7 percent.* The Pacific division saw the smallest rate of growth at 3 percent.*

In terms of monthly changes, home prices nationwide increased by 0.3 percent between November 2016 and December 2016* after seeing no change between October 2016 and November 2016.* All but one census division - West South Central - experienced an increase in their monthly rate of home price growth between November and December.* Of these divisions, New England had the largest monthly increase at 0.6 percent followed by East South Central at 0.5 percent.* The Pacific division saw the largest monthly decrease (-0.2%) while Mountain was unchanged over this period.*

Between December 2015 and December 2016*, average home prices increased across all 100 metro areas covered by the FHFA HPI with 78 metros seeing double-digit gains over this period.* Of these metro areas, Boise City-Nampa-Idaho Falls had the highest rate of annual growth at 13 percent followed closely behind by Urban Honolulu at 12 percent .* On a month-over-month basis , 55 metros experienced an increase while 45 metros experienced a decrease or were unchanged .* Of those metro areas that did see a monthly change , Reno - Sparks - Nevada hadthe largest increase (0 .7 %) while Gulfport - Biloxi - Mississippi (-0 .5 %) hadthe largest decrease .