The Federal Housing Finance Agency’s (FHFA) monthly home price index (HPI), which tracks changes in single-family home prices, clocked a modest 0.4% increase in home values for October, with a 1.7% uptick from last year, as the housing market stutters heading into 2026.
Largely aligning with expectations, the essentially flat trajectory for home values obscured some significant regional disparities, with some areas seeing prices fall over the last 12 months while others experienced increases of over 5%.
The more closely watched Case-Schiller Index tracked a similar 1.4% annual gain, and also affirmed some of the regional disparities that showed up in the FHFA’s data. Notably, the FHFA HPI delineates nine census regions, allowing a more granular look at where home values are diverging.
The two regions that actually saw prices fall were the West South Central region—including Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Texas—and the South Atlantic, encompassing Florida, Georgia, North Carolina, Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina, West Virginia, Delaware and Washington, D.C.
These two regions saw prices fall 0.7% and 0.5% year-over-year, respectively.
On the other hand, the East North Central and Middle Atlantic regions saw gains of over 5% over the last 12 months. That supports other data which has shown demand for homes persisting in regions with better affordability—or tight supply.
Those two census regions include much of the Upper Midwest (specifically, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio and Wisconsin) and three states in the Northeast—New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Those Midwestern states offer some of the most affordable homes, all with median prices well below the national average, while supply-constrained New York and New Jersey have generally seen more stable price growth over the last few years.
On the other hand, the New England states (Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont) have more momentum going into 2026, with prices rising 0.9% on a monthly basis, and 3.7% from last year. And despite its overall struggles, the West South Central states also saw a monthly jump of 1%, potentially foreshadowing a more balanced market next year.
For the full FHFA data release, click here.
