U.S. home prices continue to climb, federal agency says

WASHINGTON — Average U.S. home prices leaped nearly 13 percent from the fourth quarter of 2004 to the same period last year, showing no signs of a slowdown during the period, federal regulators reported Wednesday.

The figures released by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO), the agency that oversees the mortgage-finance companies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, indicated that while housing prices appear now to be cooling, they continued to increase sharply last year.

While home prices continue to slow in some regions, the rate of increase "generally is still extremely strong," OFHEO's chief economist, Patrick Lawler, said in a statement. "Mortgage rates climbed significantly during the second half of last year, but the effect of that increase on [home prices] so far appears to be limited."

The report also ranks price appreciation by region, state and metropolitan area. The Pacific region — Washington, Oregon and California — saw home prices jump 18.75 percent, just below the Mountain region's 18.79 percent jump, the biggest regional gain.

Statewide, Arizona topped the list with 34.9 percent appreciation. Washington state prices jumped 18.42 percent, and ranked 10th.

The Seattle-Bellevue-Everett area ranked 68th in the report, with one-year appreciation at 17.22 percent. Over five years, prices in the area have jumped nearly 52 percent. The Phoenix-Scottsdale metro area saw the highest price appreciation with a jump of 39.7 percent.

The agency noted that house prices continued to grow far more rapidly over the past year than prices of other goods and services included in the Consumer Price Index — 12.95 percent versus 4.3 percent.

Average home prices rose 12.95 percent on an annualized basis from the October-December quarter of 2004 to the fourth quarter of 2005, the new report showed. That was up from a revised 12.55 percent increase from the third quarter of 2004 to the same quarter last year.

Information from Seattle Times business staff is included

in this report.