Real US Home Price Index: FHFA House Prices Deflated by CPI, Quarterly Since 1975

The Real US Home Price Index is an Eco3min composite that removes CPI-U inflation from the FHFA All-Transactions House Price Index, leaving the change in US house prices relative to consumer prices. Each quarter, USSTHPI is divided by CPIAUCSL and the result is expressed at the prices of the latest quarter in the file. The Real US Home Price Index runs quarterly from the first quarter of 1975, which puts the late-1970s boom, the 2006–2012 bust and the post-2020 surge on one comparable scale. Over that span, nominal house prices rose about twelvefold and real prices about 90%.

Dataset: Real US Home Price Index (1975–2026) · Updated 2026-04-01

Data provided as is, with no warranty of accuracy or timeliness. Check any figure against the primary source cited on this page before using it. Terms: legal notice.

Source: FHFA All-Transactions House Price Index (USSTHPI) & BLS CPI-U (CPIAUCSL), via FRED · Eco3min calculation

Macro Takeaway

Construction & Components

The Real US Home Price Index deflates the nominal FHFA All-Transactions House Price Index by the CPI-U to produce a house price series at constant purchasing power. Both inputs are level indices, so the composite divides one index by the other instead of subtracting an inflation rate from a growth rate. Related coverage: How REIT prices track cap rates.

Formula:

Real Housing Index(t) = USSTHPI(t) × CPIAUCSL(T) / CPIAUCSL(t)
                        t = quarter, T = latest quarter in the file
                        CPIAUCSL(t) = CPI-U of the last month of quarter t

Components:

• FHFA All-Transactions House Price Index, United States: FRED series USSTHPI, quarterly, not seasonally adjusted, 1980 Q1 = 100, published about two months after each quarter ends. A weighted repeat-sales index estimated from sales prices and appraisal data on single-family homes whose mortgages were purchased or securitized by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. The numerator: nominal house prices.
• CPI-U, All Items: FRED series CPIAUCSL, BLS source, monthly, seasonally adjusted. The denominator: the price level used to deflate nominal house prices.

Frequency reconciliation: The FHFA index is quarterly and the CPI-U monthly. Each quarter is matched with the CPI-U of its last month (March, June, September, December), with no interpolation. Because the base is the latest quarter, each new FHFA release shifts the level of the whole real series, while percentage changes between two dates stay the same.

Coverage: First quarter of 1975 to the latest FHFA release. The start date is set by USSTHPI, whose FRED history begins in 1975 Q1.

Dataset Overview

Dataset Variables

The CSV and Excel files contain the following columns.

Column names match the CSV headers exactly.

Download the Complete Dataset

The full dataset is available in CSV and Excel formats.

Data provided as is, with no warranty of accuracy or timeliness. Check any figure against the primary source cited on this page before using it. Terms: legal notice.

Source FRED Series Used for This Composite

Both components of the Real US Home Price Index are public-domain series on FRED (citation requested). The composite itself is not published there. It requires the joint pull, alignment and rebasing step performed by the Eco3min pipeline.

FHFA All-Transactions House Price Index (numerator):

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.csv?id=USSTHPI

CPI-U All Items (denominator):

https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/fredgraph.csv?id=CPIAUCSL

Direct CSV Access: Eco3min Structured Dataset

https://eco3min.fr/dataset/real-housing-price.csv

This URL returns the complete pre-computed real index in CSV format. It can be used directly in pandas, R, curl, or any data tool.

Using the Dataset in Python

import pandas as pd

url = "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/real-housing-price.csv"
df = pd.read_csv(url, parse_dates=["date"])

print(df.head())
print(df["real_housing_index"].describe())

Using the Dataset in R

library(readr)

url <- "https://eco3min.fr/dataset/real-housing-price.csv"
df <- read_csv(url)

head(df)
summary(df$real_housing_index)

Both examples load the dataset directly from the URL, no download or API key required.

Methodology

The Real US Home Price Index is recomputed by the Eco3min FRED pipeline, which runs six days a week and pulls USSTHPI and CPIAUCSL from the FRED API. The series changes when FHFA publishes a new quarter, about two months after the quarter ends, or when either source revises past values. Each run matches every quarter with the CPI-U of its last month and re-expresses the full history at the prices of the latest quarter, so the most recent real value equals the nominal FHFA value.

The deflator is the full CPI-U (CPIAUCSL), not the shelter-only component, by deliberate design: using shelter to deflate housing prices would create a partially circular adjustment. The same design choice governs the inflation-adjusted French house price series, where the national CPI rather than its housing component does the deflating.

Data Quality & Provider Notes

Latency for the Real US Home Price Index is set by the slower component, the FHFA index. A quarter enters the file once FHFA publishes its quarterly report, about two months after the quarter ends (the second quarter of 2026 reached FRED on August 25, 2026). The matching CPI-U months are available by then.

Both components are revised. FHFA re-estimates the full repeat-sales history at each release as new transaction pairs arrive, and BLS revises five years of seasonally adjusted CPI-U every February. The Eco3min pipeline rewrites the whole CSV at every run, so the file always matches the latest FRED data.

Other US house price measures differ in coverage. The S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller National Index tracks repeat sales whatever the type of financing and shows a deeper 2006–2012 decline: −27.4% in nominal terms from July 2006 to February 2012, against −19.0% for the FHFA All-Transactions index from its 2007 peak. Its FRED series requires prior approval from S&P for republication, so Eco3min does not redistribute it. The FHFA purchase-only index leaves out refinance appraisals but starts in 1991. The All-Transactions index offers the longest public-domain national history, back to 1975.

What This Index Captures (And What It Doesn’t)

The Real US Home Price Index answers a precise question: has the relative price of US housing versus a representative basket of consumer goods changed over a given period? It does not answer broader questions about affordability, regional disparity, or housing-market causation, and conflating the two is the most common misreading of the data.

What it captures:

• Genuine appreciation or depreciation of the US housing stock in constant purchasing-power terms
• The real component of household wealth effects transmitted by housing
• The pure-housing channel of credit-cycle dynamics, separate from generalized inflation
• Long-horizon comparability: the 1979 peak, the 2006 peak and the 2025 high can be compared directly in real terms

What it does NOT capture (common misinterpretations):

• Affordability in absolute terms. A flat real index does not mean housing is affordable: it only means the relative price has not changed. Affordability also depends on mortgage rates and household income, which the index does not include.
• Regional dynamics. The National series is a single number that masks enormous geographic variation. Real prices in San Francisco, Phoenix, and Pittsburgh have followed completely different trajectories across the same time window.
• Transaction-level prices. The FHFA All-Transactions index is a repeat-sales index that also draws on refinance appraisals, which smooths turning points. It covers single-family homes financed by conforming mortgages, so jumbo-loan and cash segments are underrepresented, and new construction is excluded by design.
• Causation toward consumer inflation. The CPI shelter component is itself influenced by lagged housing prices, creating a partial feedback loop. The real index removes the level effect of CPI but cannot fully eliminate the dynamic interaction between housing and the rest of CPI.

The Real US Home Price Index is best used as a long-horizon valuation gauge and as one input among several when assessing the housing cycle, not as a standalone affordability indicator. On the near-term side, that gauge connects to how the 2024-2026 rate path is feeding through to housing.

Historical Regimes

The Real US Home Price Index spans five decades and several distinct housing regimes, each defined by a configuration of inflation, real rates and credit availability. Changes below are real (CPI-deflated) unless stated otherwise, and they do not move when the series is rebased.

• 1975–1979: Inflation-era boom. Real prices rose 15.0% from the first quarter of 1975 to a peak in the second quarter of 1979, while nominal prices gained 57.3%. Most of the nominal rise reflected general inflation.
• 1979–1982: Volcker disinflation. Real prices fell 16.4% to the third quarter of 1982 even as nominal prices still rose 13.2%. CPI-U inflation peaked at 14.6% year on year in March 1980, and the 30-year fixed mortgage rate reached 18.63% in October 1981 (Freddie Mac survey, via FRED), the highest reading of that series.
• 1982–1995: Recovery, then a soft patch. The Real US Home Price Index gained 19.3% to a peak in the third quarter of 1989, then lost 6.8% by the first quarter of 1995, across the 1990–91 recession and the savings-and-loan crisis.
• 1995–2006: The long real boom. Real prices rose 53.4% to a peak in the fourth quarter of 2006 (nominal +106.1%). The expansion coincided with falling mortgage rates and looser credit standards. The subprime segment itself is underrepresented in an index built on conforming mortgages. See the real interest rates dataset for the parallel rate dynamic.
• 2006–2012: Housing bust. The index fell 27.7% in real terms to the second quarter of 2012, the deepest drawdown of the series. The nominal decline from the 2007 peak was 19.0%. The fall ran through mortgage defaults, foreclosure sales and tighter lending standards.
• 2012–2026: Recovery, pandemic surge, plateau. Real prices rose 28.9% to the first quarter of 2020 and passed the 2006 peak in the second quarter of 2021. Between the third quarter of 2020 and the third quarter of 2022, the index posted its fastest eight-quarter real gain, +18.5%, a stretch that overlaps the period of negative real mortgage rates (April 2021 to January 2023). The Real US Home Price Index then held near its highs, with a new record in the second quarter of 2025 and a level 0.4% below it a year later.

For analytical context on housing affordability as the interaction between real prices and real mortgage rates, see the rates vs prices housing affordability study.

Related Macroeconomic Datasets

Real housing prices sit at the intersection of the credit cycle and real rates. The real-rate regime determines whether housing is in a structural appreciation or correction phase; credit conditions determine the amplitude of the response.

Related Research

Housing affordability is the joint outcome of real prices and real rates; the trade-off between the two defines what households actually pay each month. To be read alongside the ratio of French home prices to household income.

Macroeconomic Dataset Hub

This dataset is part of the Eco3min macro-financial data repository.

Explore the Eco3min Dataset Hub

Sources

• Federal Housing Finance Agency, All-Transactions House Price Index for the United States (FRED: USSTHPI)
• US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Consumer Price Index for All Urban Consumers (FRED: CPIAUCSL)
• Freddie Mac, Primary Mortgage Market Survey, 30-year fixed rate (FRED: MORTGAGE30US), cited in the Macro Takeaway and Historical Regimes

Dataset Reference

Eco3min Research. (2026). Real US Home Price Index (1975–2026).<br> https://eco3min.fr/en/us-real-housing-price-index-dataset/