Deschutes home price rise in U.S. top 10 — again

Deschutes County home prices continue to rise at one of the fastest rates in the country, again making the top 10 in new statistics out Tuesday from the Federal Home Financing Administration.

The Bend-Redmond metro area, defined as all of the county, saw home prices appreciate 10.87 percent in the past year, according to statistics for the second quarter. That’s ninth-fastest in the nation, just ahead of the San Francisco area.

The quarterly house price appreciation for the county was 4.85 percent, also one of the fastest among the metro areas in the top 20 list.

But another telling sign was the five-year home price appreciation, which the FHFA said was 48.58 percent for the Bend-Redmond metro area. That’s well ahead of the five-year rise in any other top 20 market, even San Francisco and No. 1 for the quarter, Reno, Nevada.

The county (metro area) was No. 10 in the nation in home price appreciation for 2014, at 11.25 percent. It’s been in the top 10 among U.S. metro areas for the past year.

But another telling sign of some cooling in the markets overall is that a year ago — when Bend-Redmond rose to No. 4 on the list of top home price appreciation – the county’s one year jump was almost 17 percent, compared to under 11 percent in the year ended June 30 of this year.

Oregon saw one-year house price appreciation of 7.96 percent for the year ended June 30, eighth-strongest in the country and well over the U.S. aveage of 5.39 percent. The quarterly rise was 2.45 percent, a five-year rise of 19.42 percent and a 230 percent increase since the start of 1991.

Nationally, U.S. house prices rose 1.2 percent in the second quarter of 2015 according to the FHFA House Price Index (HPI). It’s the 16th consecutive quarterly price increase in the purchase-only, seasonally adjusted index.

FHFA’s seasonally adjusted monthly index for June was up 0.2 percent from May. House prices rose 5.4 percent from the second quarter of 2014 to the second quarter of 2015.

The HPI is calculated using home sales price information from mortgages sold to, or guaranteed by, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

“Home price growth in the second quarter once again far exceeded the pace of overall inflation, even as mortgage rates drifted upwards,” said FHFA Principal Economist Andrew Leventis.”Although too early to tell whether it’s a sign of a slowdown, the monthly appreciation rate in June was more modest than we have seen in a while.”

The seasonally adjusted, purchase-only HPI rose 5.4 percent from the second quarter of 2014 to the second quarter of 2015, while prices of other goods and services fell 1.4 percent. The inflation-adjusted price of homes thus rose approximately 6.9 percent over the latest year.

Click here to read the full national release and download more data (Adobe PDF document).