Housing prices were up for the fourth consecutive month in June, according to the latest Home Price Index from research firm CoreLogic.

By Peter Ricci

National home prices increased 2.5 percent year-over-year in CoreLogic’s Home Price Index (HPI) for June, marking the fourth consecutive month of yearly gains for the index.

In addition, the index, which is used by the Federal Reserve in its economic reports, increased 1.3 percent increase from May, and when excluding distressed home sales, the nationwide year-over-year increase was an even strong 3.2 percent and 2.0 percent from May.

CoreLogic Pending HPI

A new feature it just unveiled last month, CoreLogic’s Pending HPI uses MLS data anticipates how prices behaved in July, the month that will be the focus of the next HPI report in September. According to CoreLogic, we can anticipate these numbers for July:

• Including distressed sales, price will rise at last 0.4 percent from June to July and 2.0 percent from July 2011.
• Excluding distressed sales, July prices will increase 1.4 percent monthly and 4.3 percent yearly.
• The first Pending HPI, which analyzed the pending prices for June, anticipated a 1.4 percent increase from May to June, which, as you can tell, was pretty darn close to what CoreLogic has ultimately reported.

The Influence of Distressed Property Sales

As with previous HPIs, the involvement of distressed sales (and the heavily-discounted sale prices that accompany them) made a big different in what states showed the greatest price  depreciation.

• Excluding distressed sales, the five states with the greatest depreciation were: Delaware (-3.6 percent), Alabama (-3.1 percent), Connecticut (-2.1 percent), New Jersey (-0.9 percent) and Kentucky (-0.4 percent).
• But when distressed sales were included, the five states were: Alabama (-4.8 percent), Connecticut (-4.0 percent), Illinois (-3.4 percent), Georgia (-2.9 percent) and Delaware (-2.8 percent).

Even with those numbers, though, CoreLogic Chief Economist Mark Fleming noted that the trend in home prices shows a lessoning influence of distressed shadow housing inventory.

“Home prices are responding positively to reductions in both visible and shadow inventory over the past year,” Fleming said. “This trend is a bright spot because the decline in shadow inventory translates to fewer distressed sales, which helps sustain price appreciation.”