National home prices rise

Home prices nationwide rose both year-over-year and month-over-month in February, according to data released Tuesday.

Compared with February 2017, home price throughout the United States were up 6.7 percent, while prices rose one percent between January and February, Irvine-based CoreLogic reported in its monthly home price index.

CoreLogic predicts that the U.S. home price index will increase 4.7 percent between February of this year and February 2019, with California recording a 10.3 percent increase during that time.

“Family income is rising more slowly than home prices and mortgage rates, meaning that the mortgage payment takes a bigger bite out of income for new homebuyers,” said Frank Martell, president and chief executive officer of CoreLogic, in a statement. “CoreLogic …  has identified nearly one-half of the fifty largest metropolitan areas as overvalued. Often buyers are lulled into thinking these high-priced markets will continue, but we find that overvalued markets will tend to have a slowdown in price growth.”