Annual Home Price Growth Up at Start of 2024

Black Knight released their Home Price Index for January, and home values rose 0.2% from December. Prices were also 5.6% higher than in January 2023.

CoreLogic’s latest Home Price Index showed that national home values fell 0.1% from December to January. While this monthly figure was different than Black Knight’s, CoreLogic reported a slightly higher level of annual appreciation, with prices 5.8% greater than a year earlier.

CoreLogic forecasts that home prices will hold steady in February and rise 2.6% in the year going forward, though it’s worth noting their forecasts tend to be on the conservative side historically. For example, CoreLogic originally forecasted that we would see 3% appreciation in 2023 but we saw 5.5%. Plus going back to 2021, they had forecasted a 6.6% decline in home values, and we saw a nearly 19% gain instead.

What’s the bottom line? The annual home price growth seen by CoreLogic and Black Knight has been echoed by other major indices like Case-Shiller and the Federal Housing Finance Agency, showing that great opportunities remain for building wealth through real estate.

What to Look for This Week

Inflation will be the key story, with February’s Consumer Price Index releasing on Tuesday and the Producer Price Index (which measures wholesale inflation) on Thursday. The Fed will be watching these reports closely, given that January’s readings were hotter than expected.

Also on Thursday, look for February’s Retail Sales and the latest Jobless Claims. Friday brings an update on manufacturing in the New York region.

Investors will also be closely watching Tuesday’s 10-year Note and Wednesday’s 30-year Bond auctions for the level of demand.

Technical Picture

Mortgage Bonds have been on a nice run higher over the last week and are now trading in a wide range between support at the 50-day Moving Average and overhead resistance at 101.392. The 10-year has been on a trajectory lower and moved down to around 4.08% at the end of last week.