Home price growth.

What PriceDNA sources it from

PriceDNA uses the Federal Housing Finance Agency House Price Index, or FHFA HPI, as the source for home price growth.

FHFA HPI follows repeat sales of the same properties over time. This makes it better suited to measuring price movement than a median sale price, which can change because the mix of properties sold has changed.

The pipeline uses FHFA’s annual tract-level HPI. Because FHFA’s tract series uses 2010 Census tract identifiers, PriceDNA maps the data to the current tract geography through the Census Bureau’s tract relationship files.

Where the focal tract does not contain the required FHFA observations, PriceDNA resolves the metric through its adaptive local-area and documented broader fallback process rather than mixing in a different home-value series.

How PriceDNA calculates it

PriceDNA calculates two local FHFA growth rates:

• a 10-year FHFA compound annual growth rate, representing the longer-term trend; and
• a 3-year FHFA compound annual growth rate, representing more recent market movement.

The projection leans on the recent rate in the early years, so recent cooling shows through quickly, then settles toward the 10-year rate over a longer hold. It is capped at the 10-year rate throughout, so a short period of rapid appreciation cannot lift it above the longer-term FHFA trend.

How to read it

Home price growth is an assumption, not a promise that the property’s value will rise at that rate.

A higher assumption increases modeled future value and appreciation. A lower assumption places more of the investment outcome on current cash flow and loan paydown rather than future price movement.

Because projected outcomes can be sensitive to appreciation, investors should pressure-test the analysis using lower growth assumptions when evaluating a deal.

Where it appears in a PriceDNA analysis

Home price growth contributes to:

• the Housing market portion of the PriceDNA Location Score™; and
• the report’s long-term projections, where it is used to model potential appreciation and projected return on investment over time.

The report highlights possible hold, refinance, or sell paths at the 3-, 5-, 7-, and 10-year milestones. These are modeled scenarios based on the assumptions used in the analysis, not guaranteed future values, appraisal opinions, or predictions of what a buyer will pay.