Bend-area home price rise still No. 8 in U.S.
Deschutes County’s home prices are still rising among the 10 fastest in the country, though the market reflected some cooldown, as also seen nationwide, new figures out Tuesday showed.
The Bend-Redmond metro area remained in the nation’s No 8 spot, with a yearly home-price growth of 16.18 percent, according to the Federal Housing Finance Agency. But that year-over-year growth, while impressive, is down a bit from the 19 percent recorded in the second quarter of the year.
And the quarterly price growth of 2.8 percent also was down noticeably from the 4.61 percent rise seen the previous quarter. The area’s five-year house price growth registered 22.63 percent, the agency said.
U.S. house prices rose 0.9 percent in the third quarter of 2014 according to the agency’s House Price Index. It’s 13th consecutive quarterly price increase in the purchase-only, seasonally adjusted index.
The HPI is calculated using home sales price information from mortgages sold to, or
guaranteed by, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Compared with last year, house prices rose 4.5 percent from the third quarter of 2013 to the third quarter of 2014. FHFA’s seasonally adjusted monthly index for September was unchanged from August.
“Easing interest rates and modestly improving labor market conditions helped to drive up prices in the third quarter,” said FHFA Principal Economist Andrew Leventis. “The price increases were relatively small in most areas, however, and are consistent with the type of market deceleration that other housing market statistics have shown in recent periods.”
