Encouraging news for the housing market: national home prices, including those of distressed properties, increased 6.8% this past April from where they stood a year before.
The figure comes from the housing price index organized by CoreLogic, a property analytics and data firm. The firm reports that home prices also increased 2.7% month-over-month from March.
CoreLogic expects the current trend of 38 straight months with home price increases to continue with a 1.1% month-over-month increase in May. According to the firm, 30 states plus the District of Columbia are within 10% of their home price peaks. The firm said that excluding distressed sales, only Louisiana and South Dakota saw year-over-year depreciation during April.
"For the first four months of 2015, home sales were up 9% compared to the same period a year ago," said CoreLogic chief economist Frank Nothaft in a statement accompanying the monthly report figures.
"One byproduct of the increased sales activity is rising house prices, and, as a result, month-over-month home prices are up almost 3% for April 2015 and up more than 6% from a year ago."
