OFHEO.gov (Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight) is an invaluable resource to anybody and everybody involved in real estate. Not only should agents, appraisers, and mortgage lenders be familiar with OFHEO and its mission, but homeowners and those hoping to someday be homeowners should be in the know about the great data OFHEO.gov provides.
According to the OFHEO.gov website, OFHEO’s mission is:
…to promote housing and a strong national housing finance system by ensuring the safety and soundness of Fannie Mae (Federal National Mortgage Association) and Freddie Mac (Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation). OFHEO works to ensure the capital adequacy and financial safety and soundness of two housing government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are the nation’s largest housing finance institutions.
One of the ancillary services OFHEO provides is monthly, quarterly, and annual tracking of appreciation rates, known formally as the House Price Index, with appreciation (or depreciation) rates broken down by national, state, major metropolitan areas. I personally make a point to visit OFHEO.gov at least once a quarter to download the latest report. The most recent report available to the public is the Quarter 4, 2008 report, released last week on February 24th, 2009. In it I found, as usual, some interesting facts about housing price trends.
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- Nationwide, house prices fell by 3.4% in the 4th quarter and fell by 8.2% for the previous full year
- This is the 6th straight quarter (18 months) of nationwide price declines, coinciding with the actual start of the recession in the fall of 2007, see chart below.
- Iowa ranks 8th best among the states with a slight decline of .64% for the 4th quarter and decline of .95% for the year.
- Illinois ranks as the 32nd “best” state with a quarterly decline of 3.03% and an annual decline of 5.75%
- The three worst states, no surprise, were Florida, California, and Nevada with respective annual declines of 23.86%, 25.52%, and 28.24%. Sorry, Mr. DiCaprio, your $8.9 million-dollar mansion is now only worth a paltry $6.6 Million
- 44 of the 50 states saw annual declines for the previous year, see chart above.
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Sounds and looks pretty grim, right? Well, in good old Dubuque Iowa we haven’t been doing all too bad. In fact, we actually saw in increase in prices for both the 4th Quarter (up .04%) and the annual figure (up .57%). Granted, these aren’t exactly big gains by any means, but at least we’re holding mostly steady against the national trends. You’re not getting mea-rich owning real estate, at least not right now. If, for example, you bought a home for $150,000 on December 31st, 2007, that same home “should” have been worth about $150,900 at the end of 2008.
At least we’re not Merced, CA, - they had a one-year decline of 49.5% – truly amazing.
You can access the full OFHEO.gov report here.
As always, I encourage your questions or comments via the comments function available in every post.