South Bend-Mishawaka, IN-MI Federal Housing Finance Agency Home Price Index (FHFA HPI)

The South Bend-Mishawaka, IN-MI, Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) House Price Index (HPI) is a weighted, repeat-sales index measuring average price changes in single-family houses in the South Bend-Mishawaka metropolitan area. The HPI is a broad measure of the movement of single-family house prices and covers both new and existing houses.

The FHFA HPI for South Bend-Mishawaka was 153.80 in 2019Q1. This represents a 0.8 percent increase from 2018Q4 and a 4.6 percent increase from 2017Q1.

Home equity is the portion of a home's value that is owned outright by the homeowner, free and clear of any liens or mortgages. In other words, it's the market value of your home minus any outstanding mortgage debt owed on the property.

According to CoreLogic's Home Equity Report for Q1 2019, homeowners with mortgages (i.e., those who have not yet paid off their home loans) saw their equity increase by an average of $7,300 over the course of 2018. This brought the average homeowner's equity stake up to $171,000, or 36 percent of their home's total value.

In Q1 2019, the median U.S. home was worth $226,000—up 5 percent from a year earlier—while the average mortgage balance decreased slightly to $176,222 over that same time period. As such, homeowners with mortgages saw their equity stake grow to 78 percent in Q1 2019 from 76 percent in Q1 2018 .

looking at these two measures together—home prices and home equity—we see that while prices have been rising steadily for several years now , homeowners' equity stakes have been growing even faster . This is due largely to the fact that mortgage debt levels have been falling since peaking in early 2010 .