FHFA data showed prices climbing again even as mortgage rates hovered near 6%
United States home prices continued to edge higher in November, offering little relief to borrowers who hoped easing mortgage rates would translate into softer valuations.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA) latest House Price Index showed a 0.6% seasonally adjusted gain from October and a 1.9% rise compared with November 2024, a slight increase that still marked the fastest annual increase in 14 months.
Monthly price changes ranged from flat in the Middle Atlantic to a 1.1% jump in the East South Central division. Year‑over‑year moves ran from a 0.4% decline in the Pacific to a 5.1% gain in the East North Central states. That split proves earlier FHFA data that showed much of 2025’s momentum concentrated in the Midwest and Northeast as formerly booming Western markets cooled.
Rates near 6% but buyers still stretched
Even with borrowing costs down from their 2023 peak, the rate backdrop remained challenging. Freddie Mac’s latest Primary Mortgage Market Survey put the average 30‑year fixed mortgage at 6.09% as of January 22, up slightly from the prior week but nearly a full percentage point lower than a year earlier.
“With the economy improving and the average 30‑year fixed‑rate mortgage nearly a percentage point lower than last year, more homebuyers are entering the market,” Freddie Mac chief economist Sam Khater said.
House prices, however, still sat high relative to incomes after adjusting for inflation, pushing homeownership out of reach for many would‑be buyers.
“From June 2024 to June 2025, the Consumer Price Index climbed 2.7%, substantially outpacing the 1.9% gain in national home prices,” Nicholas Godec of S&P Dow Jones Indices said in an earlier analysis, warning that “American housing wealth has actually declined in inflation‑adjusted terms over the past year.”
Policy moves and inventory constraints
The Trump administration recently moved to restrict institutional investors from buying single‑family homes and signaled new purchases of mortgage‑backed securities aimed at driving rates lower.
Those steps are billed as affordability measures, but economists and real estate professionals largely expect only limited effects, arguing that more lower‑priced inventory would be needed to materially improve access to homeownership.
The market has been defined less by bidding wars and more by scarce, uneven inventory. First American’s December index showed national prices nearly unchanged for 2025 as income growth began to outpace appreciation, even while many metros in the Northeast and Midwest continued to post gains, chief economist Mark Fleming said.
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