Data Analysis

The FHFA House Price Index rose 2.6 percent over the year in July 2026, seven tenths of a point more than the Case-Shiller national index reported for the same month.

Prices rose 0.3 percent from June, and the previously reported flat reading for June was left unchanged. The nine census divisions ranged from minus 0.8 percent to plus 1.5 percent on the month.

United States house prices rose 2.6 percent over the twelve months ending July 2026 and 0.3 percent from June, the Federal Housing Finance Agency reported on September 29, 2026. The agency left its previously reported June figure of 0.0 percent unchanged. Across the nine census divisions, seasonally adjusted monthly changes ran from minus 0.8 percent in the Mountain division to plus 1.5 percent in the Middle Atlantic, and twelve-month changes from plus 0.6 percent to plus 6.3 percent in those same two divisions.

The same morning, S&P Dow Jones Indices reported its own national house price index up 1.93 percent over the year. Two federal-adjacent price measures, the same month, seven tenths of a point apart.

What did the FHFA House Price Index do in July 2026?

The agency's summary sentence reads: "U.S. house prices rose nationwide in July, up 0.3 percent from the previous month, according to the U.S. Federal Housing (FHFA) seasonally adjusted monthly House Price Index (FHFA HPI®)."

On the divisions, the release states: "For the nine census divisions, seasonally adjusted monthly home price changes ranged from -0.8 percent in the Mountain division to +1.5 percent in the Middle Atlantic division. The 12-month changes ranged from +0.6 percent in the Mountain division to +6.3 percent in the Middle Atlantic division."

The FHFA release carries no economist quote and no commentary beyond those figures.

Why does FHFA say 2.6 percent when Case-Shiller says 1.9?

Not because one of them is wrong. They are counting different houses.

The FHFA describes its index this way: "The FHFA HPI® is a weighted, repeat-sales index, meaning that it measures average price changes in repeat sales or refinancings on the same properties." Its data comes from "reviewing repeat mortgage transactions on single-family properties whose mortgages have been purchased or securitized by Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac since January 1975."

That last clause is the whole difference. A house only enters the FHFA index if its mortgage passed through Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac. Cash purchases do not. Nor do loans too large or too unusual for those two to buy.

S&P's index is also repeat-sales. S&P describes it as combining "matched price pairs for thousands of individual houses from the available universe of arms-length sales data," tracking "the value of single-family housing within the United States." No mortgage filter.

So the FHFA is measuring the middle of the mortgage market and S&P is measuring sales more broadly. When the two ends of the market move differently from the middle, the two indexes separate. Neither publisher explains the July gap, and this article does not assign a cause to it.

Do the two indexes agree on anything?

They agree almost exactly on the month, which is the part nobody reports.

FHFA had prices up 0.3 percent from June to July, seasonally adjusted. S&P had its national index up 0.29 percent over the same month on the same basis. One hundredth of a point apart. Momentum Research put those two figures side by side; neither publisher makes the comparison.

That is worth holding onto. The two indexes disagree by seven tenths of a point about the past year and agree to a hundredth of a point about the past month. A disagreement about the year that does not show up in the month is a disagreement about what happened earlier in that year, not about July.

What do the census divisions show, and where does Florida sit?

Florida is in the South Atlantic division, along with eight other states and the District of Columbia. The FHFA release does not name the South Atlantic division at all. It publishes only the high and the low, Mountain and Middle Atlantic, in both the monthly and twelve-month ranges.

So the honest answer is that today's release tells Florida readers where the national number landed and nothing about their own division. The South Atlantic figure exists in the FHFA's underlying monthly tables, and the desk will add it if and when those tables become readable.

What can be said from the release is narrow and still useful. Whatever happened in the South Atlantic in July, it sat somewhere between minus 0.8 and plus 1.5 percent on the month, and between plus 0.6 and plus 6.3 percent on the year, because those are the extremes across all nine divisions.

What does this mean for Florida buyers and sellers?

Two things, both modest.

First, when a national headline says home prices rose by some percent, the number depends on which index the writer picked, and today the two differ by seven tenths of a point. Ask which one.

Second, the national figure is not a Florida figure, and in July the distance was large. The Case-Shiller release the same morning put Miami up 3.53 percent over the year and Tampa down 0.73 percent, both against a national 1.93 percent. Florida's own closed sales, prices and inventory sit on the Florida housing tracker, and the metro detail is on our market pages, including Miami and Tampa.

Limitations

The FHFA figures come from the agency's own September 2026 House Price Index report page, read twice with different prompts, the second after the first had expired from cache. Both reads returned identical values and the same verbatim division sentence. The index description is quoted from the FHFA's own House Price Index data page.

The South Atlantic division figure is not in this article because it is not in the release. The agency's monthly report document and its downloadable datasets hold division-level detail, but neither was readable from this desk today, and no figure was estimated or carried over from the quarterly series, which covers a different period and a different vintage.

The comparison with the Case-Shiller index is Momentum Research's own. Both indexes are described here in their publishers' words, and the reading that the FHFA measures the Fannie and Freddie mortgage market while S&P measures arms-length sales more broadly follows from those descriptions. Neither publisher comments on the other, and no cause is assigned to the gap.

The seven-tenths gap uses FHFA's 2.6 percent against S&P's 1.93 percent as each published them, at the precision each published. The one-hundredth agreement on the month uses FHFA's 0.3 percent against S&P's seasonally adjusted 0.29 percent.

Sources

Federal Housing Finance Agency, U.S. House Price Index report for September 2026, covering July 2026 data, published September 29, 2026.

Federal Housing Finance Agency, House Price Index data page, for the index description and methodology.

S&P Dow Jones Indices, S&P Cotality Case-Shiller Home Price Indices, July 2026 release, published September 29, 2026.

Disclosure: Jon Brooks is a co-founder of Momentum Realty, a Florida real estate brokerage that owns and funds Florida Housing Intelligence. Momentum has a financial interest in Florida real estate transactions, including in markets named here. See our editorial standards.