Home price growth hits 15-year high

CoreLogic Home Price Index rose by 10.4 percent in February

February were 10.4 percent higher than last year. (iStock)
February were 10.4 percent higher than last year. (iStock)

Home prices continue to skyrocket as low levels of inventory begin to depress the number of sales.

CoreLogic Home Price Index, which tracks national home prices, showed prices were 10.4 percent higher in February than they were a year earlier. It was the largest increase since April 2006.

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No state reported an annual decline in home prices, while the largest gains were Idaho’s 22.6 percent, Montana’s 19.5 percent and South Dakota’s 17.1 percent. Bidding wars have juiced once-sleepy housing markets as work-from-home policies unleased city dwellers with big housing budgets on lower-priced areas.

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Among large cities, some of the largest year-over-year home price growth in February was in Miami, up 7 percent; Los Angeles, 8.2 percent; and Chicago, 6.3 percent. Miami was also one of the five markets that CoreLogic deemed most at risk for a decline in home prices.

Nationally, prices in February were up 1.2 percent from January, when the index saw its biggest annual gain in seven years.

The gains come as the number of homes on the market have remained historically low. The supply is beginning to constrain sales, according to the National Association of Realtors, and soaring lumber prices are driving up the cost of new construction.