Soaring home prices are back.

A report released Thursday by the Federal Housing Finance Agency ranked the Bend-Redmond Metropolitan Statistical Area fourth in the country for yearly home price increases.

Median prices in the Bend-Redmond metro area, which covers all of Deschutes County, increased 16.73 percent in the second quarter of the year compared with the second quarter of 2012.

The FHFA’s quarterly house price index tracks median home-price gains in each of the nearly 400 metro areas in the United States.

Only three metro areas in the country — Stockton, Calif., Phoenix and Las Vegas — had higher year-over-year appreciation rates than Bend-Redmond.

In the last four quarters, Deschutes County has made the agency’s top-20 list for price gains three times.

Prices are still significantly lower than their pre-recession levels; the FHFA report said the metro area’s median price was 27.2 percent lower than in the second quarter of 2008.

But the recent gains have come as Bend’s supply of available homes has dwindled.

“Consumers want to buy homes, but sometimes there just isn’t anything for them to buy,” said Lester Friedman, a broker with Coldwell Banker Morris Real Estate.

Demand for new homes in the city has shot up in the last year, after several years of declines following the 2008 housing market collapse.

The high demand and low supply are combining to put upward pressure on prices, Friedman said.

Bend’s median home price has risen about $50,000 in the last year, according to data from Bratton Appraisal Group. The city is issuing permits for new homes at nearly twice the pace this year as last year.

But those permits aren’t turning into new homes quickly enough to meet the demand, Friedman said, especially at the low end of the price scale — homes valued at $250,000 or less.

“Supply is up, but it isn’t ramping up fast enough,” he said. “We’d like more homes to sell.”