The first quarter HPI data, released last month by the Federal Housing Finance Agency for hundreds of metropolitan areas nationwide, shows continued declines in southern and western Colorado. Prices in Colorado Springs, Pueblo and Grand Junction have fallen, year over year, in each quarter since early 2011.
Statewide, with Colorado home price index was up year over year while the national index dropped. (See the analysis here.)
Year over year, the 1-year changes in each metro area were:
Boulder +2.3%
Colo Springs -1.4%
Denver-Aurora +0.3%
Fort Coll-Loveland +2.2%
Grand Junction -4.8%
Greeley +0.6%
Pueblo -2.9%
The first graph shows the year-over-year change in each region for each quarter. For the sake of visual clarity, the graph only shows data back to 2008.
Since the fourth quarter of 2008, the year-over-year changes have been generally negative. The graph also shows us that:
-Grand Junction and Pueblo have consistently shown some of the largest decreases in recent years.
-The Ft Collins-Loveland area has tended to show the smallest decreases in recent years, and together with Boulder shows some of the largest increases in recent quarters.
The second graph shows the actual HPI values for each quarter going back to 2000. In general, the HPI began to plateau during 2007 and was declining in most areas by 2008. A big exception in the Grand Junction area which continued to increase rapidly well into 2008.
Since the peak period of the first quarter of 2007, the HPI has fallen in all regions. The following shows the change in the HPI compared to the peak period, as of the first quarter of 2012.
Boulder -2.5
Colo Springs -10.6
Denver-Aurora -5.8
Fort Coll-Loveland -2.4
Grand Junction -18.8
Greeley -15.1
Pueblo -12.3
This report overall suggests that while there is a fair amount of price stability in many areas of Colorado, prices continue to fall outside the most robust areas of northern Colorado and metro Denver. When compared with Case-Shiller and local Metrolist data, we can say that through the first quarter of 2012, weakness in demand for for-purchase housing persists, but that losses in value are diminishing in each new time period. The CoreLogic index showed some small year over year increases in single-family homes. See here for more.
The index values presented and analyzed in this article are not seasonally adjusted. The data in this article is taken from the FHFA "all-transactions" data. The index is based on home price data obtained through the GSEs such as Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
