Short answer. The Housing Almanac publishes the FHFA all-transactions house price index for the 100 largest U.S. metro areas, annual, back to 1975 where the series exists, as a chart and a year-by-year table on each metro's page, alongside the national median price and mortgage rate series from 1963.
There are three official sources for long-run metro house prices, and this site is built on them.
- FHFA House Price Index (Federal Housing Finance Agency): all-transactions indexes for every metropolitan statistical area, quarterly and annual, most metros back to the mid-1970s. Free, public, and the series used on every metro page on this site.
- S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller: 20 metro areas, monthly, from 1987 (10 metros) and 2000 (20 metros). Purchase-only, value-weighted.
- FRED (Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis): republishes both, plus Census and NAR national medians, with download and charting.
What this site adds
Each of the 100 largest metros gets a page with the full FHFA annual series charted and tabled, the peak-to-trough figures for the 2006 to 2012 cycle, and the 10-year and since-2000 growth computed for you. For example, New York since 2000 and Phoenix's full history. The national layer, median home prices, sales, and mortgage rates from 1963, sits alongside so a metro's move can be read against the country's.
Which to use
For a single metro over decades, use FHFA (this site or FHFA's own downloads). For month-to-month moves in the largest 20 metros, use Case-Shiller. For anything you want to chart against interest rates or inflation, FRED has both series and the macro data in one place.
Sources: FHFA HPI; S&P Dow Jones Indices; Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis FRED.
Sources
U.S. Census Bureau Survey of Construction; National Association of Realtors Existing Home Sales report; Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey; National Bureau of Economic Research Business Cycle Dating Committee.