Understanding the Freddie Mac House Price Index (FMHPI®)
The Freddie Mac House Price Index (FMHPI®) provides a precise, month-by-month view of U.S. home price trends by tracking repeat sales of the same properties over time, making it a more reliable indicator than simple average or median sale price metrics. Updated through June 2025 and released on July 31, this index remains a trusted resource for understanding market shifts in metros like Austin, where home values are experiencing one of the sharpest corrections in the country. Whether you’re buying, selling, or analyzing market cycles, the FMHPI® delivers critical insights into long-term pricing patterns, short-term fluctuations, and post-peak market performance. Explore our latest Austin analysis below and download the full report for a detailed, data-driven breakdown of current housing trends.
Understanding the Freddie Mac House Price Index (FMHPI®) and Its Impact on the Austin Housing Market – July 2025 Update
The Freddie Mac House Price Index (FMHPI®) continues to be one of the most reliable and widely referenced tools for monitoring residential real estate price trends across the United States. Released monthly, this index provides a standardized measurement of single-family home values based on conventional, conforming mortgage transactions purchased or securitized by Freddie Mac. By focusing on verified mortgage data rather than listing activity or non-standard financing, FMHPI offers a clear, unbiased view of price performance over time, helping analysts, policymakers, and real estate professionals gauge long-term market stability and affordability trends.
Unlike local MLS data, which can be influenced by off-market transactions, atypical seller concessions, or delayed reporting, FMHPI presents a consistent baseline for evaluating how home prices are moving at the national, state, and metro levels. The index captures several critical benchmarks, including cumulative appreciation from set anchor points such as January 2020 or May 2022, as well as recent month-over-month and year-over-year changes. This layered approach allows for both a historical and near-term perspective on price dynamics.
The latest data, released on July 31, 2025, highlights that the Austin-Round Rock-Georgetown metro continues to lead all major U.S. markets in price decline from its peak. As of June 2025, Austin home prices are down 15.0% from the high reached in May 2022, maintaining its position as the steepest post-peak correction among the 40 largest metros tracked. This decline underscores the sharp market rebalancing that has taken place over the past two years following the pandemic-era surge in home values, when Austin became one of the hottest migration and investment destinations in the country.
Year-over-year, Austin prices remain in negative territory at -2.4%, marking another month where local values lag the national average, which climbed 6.8% over the same period. On a month-over-month basis, Austin recorded a slight -0.1% change, essentially flat but still below the national average increase of 1.63%. These figures highlight that, despite some stabilization compared to the steep declines of 2023 and early 2024, the Austin market has yet to regain consistent upward momentum. Rising inventory levels, higher mortgage rates, and persistent affordability challenges continue to weigh on local price growth.
To provide context, even with the 15.0% correction from peak pricing, Austin’s home values remain 41.2% higher than January 2020 levels and 18.8% higher than January 2021. The market experienced a meteoric rise during 2020–2022, fueled by a surge of remote workers, tech sector expansion, and substantial in-migration from higher-cost markets. That rapid run-up outpaced wage growth and long-term fundamentals, setting the stage for a necessary recalibration once mortgage rates climbed and supply constraints eased. The result is a market that, while still elevated over pre-pandemic baselines, has had to give back a significant portion of its unsustainable pandemic-era gains.
Nationally, many metros have already set new price peaks in 2025, with cities like Milwaukee, New York, Chicago, and Cleveland all posting annual gains between 5% and 7% and cumulative growth exceeding 50% since 2020. By contrast, Austin remains one of only a handful of markets that have not yet fully recovered, ranking at the bottom of the FMHPI list for both peak-to-current declines and year-over-year performance. This divergence underscores how local economic drivers, supply-demand imbalances, and previous overvaluation can dramatically affect market resilience in a high-rate environment.
For buyers in Austin, the FMHPI data suggests an extended opportunity window to purchase below peak pricing, with negotiability remaining higher than in other major markets where competition has returned. For sellers, the index serves as a reminder that pricing strategy must be grounded in current market realities rather than anchored to peak valuations that are unlikely to return in the near term. The market is moving through a normalization phase, and understanding where Austin stands relative to other metros is critical for setting realistic expectations.
While FMHPI is not a forward-looking forecast, it is a highly reliable benchmark for measuring past and present price performance. When paired with MLS-level supply data, absorption rates, and pending contract trends, it helps paint a comprehensive picture of market health. As of June 2025, Austin’s housing market remains one of the most corrected in the nation, yet long-term appreciation trends remain positive compared to pre-pandemic baselines. This signals that while short-term price recovery may take time, the underlying fundamentals of population growth, job creation, and economic diversity still support long-run market stability once affordability pressures ease.
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