Corelogic: Colorado home price index up 5.7 percent, continuing growth trend

Following many months of year-over-year declines in Corelogic's Home Price Index (HPI),
Colorado has now shown five months in a row of year-over-year increases with May's increase coming in at 5.7 percent.  The May HPI report, released yesterday by Corelogic, shows the national HPI rising by 2.0 percent, year over year.

May 2012 was the fifth month since mid-2010 to show a positive year-over-year change in the HPI in Colorado, and the May increase was the largest increase reported since the financial crisis of 2008. Annual declines have been common since 2009, although the trend in declines was interrupted briefly by the homebuyer tax credits which created some annual gains in the HPI in Colorado and nationally from late 2009 to mid-2010.

The annual increase in the HPI of 5.7 percent during May is one of the larger increases shown in home price indices for Colorado and its metros put out by various organizations.  Case-Shiller, for example, reported a 2.8 percent increase for metro Denver in April (the most recent month available) while Corelogic reported an increase of 3 percent for that month.

The CoreLogic HPI shows that, nationally, home prices have risen less than prices in Colorado and that Colorado prices are increasing at a faster rate. 

In the May report, only 8 states reported larger year-over-year increases than Colorado. The states with the largest increases were Arizona and Idaho with increases of 12 percent and 9.2 percent, respectively.  The states with the largest declines in the home price index were Rhode Island and Delaware with drops of 4.4 percent and 9.0 percent, respectively.