Thursday, March 02, 2006

Problems with OFHEO Housing Data

Here are the some known issues with OFHEO Housing Price Index (HPI) Data:

It only uses data from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac: "The HPI is published by the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight (OFHEO) using data provided by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac."

In 2006 only includes loans that are less then 359.65K: "Only mortgage transactions on single-family properties are included. Conforming refers to a mortgage that both meets the underwriting guidelines of Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac and that does not exceed the conforming loan limit, a figure linked to an index published by the Federal Housing Finance Board. The conforming mortgage loan limit for single-family homes in 2006 increased to $417,000 from $359,650 in 2005."

For more information check out the OFHEO HPI FAQ.

2 comments:

  1. A buddy of mine who works at FNM explained to me that the have a limit of somewhere around 369K. Hence, if the report only lists data from FNM it's not an acurate report and I would say misleading.

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  2. David - The key housing stat in the press release includes refi value estimates, not sales prices, and during the refi boom, this was more than half the data set, I believe. Why on earth would they even think of including that? Its not sales data at all. In addition, its true that the data only considers conventional mortgage loans so the upper end of the market is basically omitted from the data pool. Matrix Best, Jonathan

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