When prices on goods and services go up, there's an increased likelihood that more people won't be able to afford or buy them. That's exactly what has been happening in the U.S. housing market.

According to Yahoo Finance, the value of homes spiked by 5.5 percent this past November year-over-year. That stat is provided courtesy of real estate firm CoreLogic. That's a slight increase of October 2014's 5.4 percent year-over-year, which was initially reported as a 6.1 percent increase.

Why the upward trend in prices? Much of the cause comes down to the fact that a lot of Americans were priced out of the home-buying market after house price gains reached double-digit levels in 2013. On top of that, the incomes of Americans could not keep up with the spike in home prices as wages increased by a mere two percent.

As a result, home sales suffered last year, and this prevented prices from increasing even higher.

Nevertheless, home prices are still below their highest asking prices of April 2006, and have since taken a dive, due in large part to the economic calamity that gripped the globe following the stock market crash of late 2008.

In some parts of the country, notably those benefitting from the resurgence in the domestic energy industry, home prices rose sharper than the national average. For instance, in Texas, North Dakota, and Colorado, home prices increased 8.5, 7.9, and 8.8 percent respectively. However, now that oil is selling for $50 a barrel, which is roughly a 50 percent drop from about seven months ago or so, those rates could sink this year should that trend continue.

In the interim, CoreLogic expects that, while home prices are expected to rise even higher this year, the increases will be unremarkable at best. The firm expects prices to spike by 4.6 percent, while reaching pre-recession levels by the middle of this calender year in the process.

Overall, the National Association of Realtors predicts that sales of homes will number 5.3 million this year, which would be notably higher than its prediction of 4.9 million sales last year.