House Price Index - HPI

You check the real estate section every week to see if anything sold in your area. Every time one of your neighbors hosts an open house, you show up dressed in sunglasses, a baggy hoodie and a fake mustache, so you can surreptitiously gather info about local home price changes.

Bottom line: you're a home price data junkie. But how do you break out of local statistics? How do you gather the same type of info on a national level?

That’s where the home price index comes in. Released on a monthly basis, based on data compiled by the Federal Housing Finance Agency, the HPI tracks changes in national house prices. It allows you to see movement in prices for single-family homes.