Dec 30 (Reuters) – U.S. home prices rose in October at the slowest annual rate in more than 13 years, government data showed on Tuesday, in a sign of improving affordability in the long-struggling housing market.
The Federal Housing Finance Agency said home prices rose 1.7% from a year earlier in October after climbing by an upwardly revised 1.8% in September. That marked the smallest annual price increase since March 2012, when prices first started rising after a five-year slump triggered by the global financial crisis.
On a regional basis, annual price changes ranged from a drop of 0.7% in the lower Midwest to an increase of 5.3% in the Mid-Atlantic region.
Home price increases are now a fraction of what they were during and immediately after the COVID-19 pandemic, when widespread work-from-home policies sent the real estate market into a frenzy and sent prices spiraling higher at annual rates approaching 20%.
On a monthly basis, U.S. home prices rose 0.4% in October following a downwardly revised decline of 0.1% in September.
(Reporting by Dan Burns; Editing by Andrea Ricci)
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