As anticipated, the Federal Housing Finance Agency announced that it decided to finalize plans to use its existing “expanded data” House Price Index for tracking home prices for setting Fannie Mae’s and Freddie Mac’s maximum conforming loan limits. During the comment period, industry participants largely supported the plan but questioned the extent to which conforming loan limits should be adjusted. The FHFA said it will release the maximum conforming loan limits for 2016 using the expanded-data HPI at the end of November. The most recent FHFA House Price Index was released late this week and reported a 0.3 percent increase in U.S. house prices in August from July. Year-over-year, house prices were up 5.5 percent.