U.S. May home prices up 0.9 percent, off 5.6 percent in year

A boy rides his bike past several abandoned houses in a former thriving working-class neighborhood that is now littered with blight in Flint, Michigan July 8, 2009.

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Prices of U.S. single-family home rose by a seasonally adjusted 0.9 percent in May from April but were 5.6 percent lower than a year earlier and 10.7 percent below their April 2007 peak, the Federal Housing Finance Agency said on Wednesday.

The regulator's monthly home price index (HPI) for April was revised down to a 0.3 percent decline from a previously reported 0.1 percent dip.

"Revisions and volatility of the monthly index make it hard to draw any conclusions, but the seasonally-adjusted HPI for the first five months of this year is up 0.3 percent, or 0.7 percent on an annualized basis," FHFA Director James Lockhart said in a statement.

For the nine census divisions, seasonally-adjusted monthly price changes from April to May ranged from -2.0 percent in New England to +2.7 percent in the Pacific division. Five of the divisions posted increases in the month.

The index is calculated using purchase prices of houses financed with mortgages that have been sold to or guaranteed by mortgage finance sources Fannie Mae FNM.N FNM.P or Freddie Mac FRE.N FRE.P.

(Reporting by Lynn Adler; Editing by Theodore d'Afflisio)