Nationwide home prices increased by 20% year over year in February 2022, the 12th consecutive month of double-digit gains, CoreLogic reported Tuesday. The real estate analytics company also announced that prices in February were up 2.2% from the prior month.
Buyers outnumber sellers in housing markets all over the country, CoreLogic reported. But the company laid the blame for rapid price increases on the record-low number of homes for sale. New listings in March, for example, averaged 25% below 2019 levels.
“New listings have not kept up with the large number of families looking to buy, leading to homes selling quickly and often above list price,” CoreLogic chief economist Frank Nothaft said in a news release. “This imbalance between an insufficient number of owners looking to sell relative to buyers searching for a home has led to the record appreciation of the past 12 months.”
Nothaft said that higher home prices and rising mortgage interest rates that are hampering affordability should dampen demand in the coming months. In turn, this should lead to a moderation in price growth. CoreLogic’s latest forecast calls for U.S. home-price growth of 5% for the year ending in February 2023.
Phoenix topped the nation with 30.4% year-over-year price growth this past February, followed by Las Vegas at 26.5% and San Diego at 25.2%. The states with the highest annualized increases at this time were Florida (29.1%), Arizona (28.6%) and Nevada (25.8%).
CoreLogic determined that the markets most at risk for price declines in the coming year were the Arizona metros of Lake Havasu City-Kingman and Prescott; the Connecticut metros of Bridgeport-Stamford-Norwalk and Hartford; and Honolulu.
