After accelerating on a year-over-year basis through every previous month in 2017, the rate of home price appreciation appears to have stabilized in July, at least according to one of the major price indices.  Black Knight Financial Services said on Monday that prices on its national Home Price Index (HPI) rose at a lower rate, not only on an annual basis, but also month-over-month than in June.

Black Knight's HPI was up 0.5 percent from June to July, down from a 0.9 percent gain in June.  The largest increase thus far in 2017 was 1.3 percent in March, and Black Knight noted the rate of monthly appreciation has steadily slowed over the subsequent months. Over the seven months year-to-date the average monthly change has been +0.84 percent.

On an annual basis, prices were up 6.2 percent compared to a year earlier, the same as the year-over-year appreciation in June.  The national level HPI is now at $281,000, marking a 5.9 percent gain thus far this year and setting a new price peak.

New York State led the country in monthly appreciation, with prices growing 1.8 percent from June.  Nine of the best performing metropolitan areas were in the state.  New York was followed by Rhode Island and Montana, each with 1.2 percent gains, and Utah and Nevada at 1.0 percent.

Virginia and Delaware were the only states to see a decline. Priced pulled back 0.2 percent in the former and 0.1 percent in the latter compared to June.  North Carolina and West Virginia were unchanged from June and several states tied as the fifth worst performers with 0.1 percent increases; Iowa, Connecticut, North Dakota, and Alaska.

The national HPI is now 41.3 percent higher than at the trough reached in 2012. Among the 20 largest states as designated by Black Knight, Georgia, Indiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Texas, Washington and Wisconsin all hit new post-recession peaks as did 20 or the 40 largest metropolitan areas.

Black Knight HPI utilizes repeat sales data from the nation's largest public records data set as well as loan-level mortgage performance data from both disclosure and non-disclosure states to produce its Home Price Index.  Data is provided on a seasonally adjusted basis.