Federal Housing Finance Agency Report

T he Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA), which regulates Fannie Mae and Freddy Mac and a few other banks, put out its quarterly report on our nations housing the other day and there were a few interesting points I’d like to share. Washington State ranked 39^th in appreciation with a loss of -7.42% in values over the last 12 months, -5.05% in the last quarter yet still showed a gain of 40.67% in the last five year period and a whopping 159.02% since the agency began tracking in the first quarter of 1991. So if you bought a $200,000 house in Washington State in 1991, on average it would be worth $518,040 today; not a bad return! These numbers were taken from the FHFA’s purchase only House Price Index which covers new purchase loans backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, these account for about 40% of all outstanding loans and this index gives us a broad measure of the movement of single family home prices in specific geographic areas.

Prices fell in 44 states and Washington DC, and price decreases exceeded 5% in 22 states over the last four quarters and exceeded 10% in 8 states. Prices in the Mount Vernon – Anacortes metro area ranked 201 out of 292 areas studied with a loss of 5.09% in value over the last year, and a loss of 2.93% in the fourth quarter of 2008. The good news is that we have had a gain of 52.56% over five years according to the FHFA’s All Transactions Index which includes both purchase and refinance loans, and this beats Washington States average! So, while prices are down at the moment, homes do remain a great investment when looked at as a long term investment; which they are and always have been.

All but one of the bottom twenty metro areas in terms of value loss are in California or Florida, the one exception is Las Vegas/Paradise NV. Put on the list of places you are glad you don’t own a home, Merced CA with a one year loss of 49.5%, Stockton California with a 40.2% loss and Modesto CA with a loss of 37.8%.

See the full report HERE.