Poughkeepsie-Newburgh-Middletown, NY Federal Housing Finance Agency Home Price Index (FHFA HPI)

The Poughkeepsie-Newburgh-Middletown, NY, Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) house price index (HPI) is a weighted, repeat-sales index measuring average price changes in single-family houses with mortgages backed by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. The HPI covers the entire United States and is provided quarterly.

In the fourth quarter of 2020, the Poughkeepsie-Newburgh-Middletown HPI was up 3.8 percent from the fourth quarter of 2019 and up 1.3 percent from the third quarter of 2020. On a year-over-year basis, home prices have increased for eight consecutive quarters. The last time home prices declined on a year-over-year basis was in the first quarter of 2012 (-0.4 percent).

The Poughkeepsie metro area’s housing market has been strong in recent years due to robust job growth and limited new construction activity. The area’s unemployment rate has been below 4 percent for four consecutive years and was 3.2 percent in December 2020, well below the national unemployment rate of 6.7 percent. Meanwhile, annual single-family housing starts have averaged just over 500 units since 2016, which is less than half of the long-run average (1,200 units). As a result of these trends, home prices have risen steadily and are now at all-time highs.

The Poughkeepsie metro area’s HPI value peaked at 225 in the second quarter of 2006 and then fell sharply during the housing market downturn, bottoming out at 138 in early 2009 (a 38 percent decline). Home prices then began to recover slowly but steadily until reaching their previous peak value in late 2013 (224). After plateauing for several quarters around this level, home prices started to increase again in mid-2016 and have continued to do so since then. The HPI reached 250 in early 2018 and has continued to rise since then; it was 262 as of the fourth quarter of 2020 – just shy of its all-time high set 14 years earlier.