Home prices rose 5.8% in the fourth quarter from a year earlier as buyers competed for a tight supply of listings.
Prices climbed 1.4% on a seasonally adjusted basis from the previous three months, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said in a report Thursday from Washington.
Improving employment has helped bring more buyers into a market with fewer choices. There were 1.79 million previously owned homes for sale at the end of the fourth quarter, down 3.8% from a year earlier, according to the National Association of Realtors. The average supply for the quarter was 4.6 months. Less than five months is considered a tight market, the Realtors group has said.
"Instability in financial markets did not seem to put much of a drag on home prices in the fourth quarter," Andrew Leventis, the FHFA's supervisory economist, said in a statement. The increase from the previous three months "was in line with the extremely steady — but historically elevated — appreciation rates we have been observing for several years now."
Prices in December rose 0.4% on a seasonally adjusted basis from November, according to the FHFA. The average estimate of 19 economists surveyed by Bloomberg was for a 0.6% gain.
In the fourth quarter, prices rose from a year earlier in every state and the District of Columbia. Nevada had the biggest increase, at 12.7%. Colorado and Idaho followed, at 10.9% and 10.7%, respectively.
Among the 100 most-populated metropolitan areas, prices jumped 20.7% from a year earlier in the San Francisco area. The biggest decline was in New Haven, Conn., where prices fell 1.5%.
The FHFA index measures transactions for single-family properties financed with mortgages owned or securitized by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. It doesn't provide specific prices. The median price of an existing single-family home in the U.S. was $222,700 in the fourth quarter, up 6.9% from a year earlier, according to the Realtors group.
