Eye On Housing
Sales of newly-built, single-family homes fell 7.6% on a monthly basis in August to a 609,000 seasonally adjusted annual rate according to estimates from the Census Bureau and HUD. However, the monthly change masks the fact that the August pace of new home sales was the second strongest since the end of the Great Recession. New home sales for August… Read More ›
According to the Federal Reserve Board’s second quarter of 2016 release of its Financial Accounts of the United States report, household holdings of real estate, measured on a not seasonally adjusted basis, totaled $22.290 trillion in the second quarter of 2016, $1.388 trillion higher than its level in the second quarter of 2015, $20.902 trillion. At the same time, home mortgage debt… Read More ›
Consumer credit outstanding expanded by a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 5.8% over the month of July 2016, 1.0 percentage point faster than its growth rate in June. According to the report, released by the Federal Reserve Board, there is now $3.66 trillion in outstanding consumer credit. Growth in revolving credit, which is largely composed of credit card debt, contributed to… Read More ›
The count of unfilled jobs in the overall construction sector rose in July, nearing the post-Great Recession high set in March. Residential construction hiring has also increased, after a period of soft gains in jobs. According to the BLS Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey (JOLTS) and NAHB analysis, the number of open construction sector jobs (on a seasonally adjusted basis) rose to 214,000 in July, after establishing a… Read More ›
NAHB analysis of information published in Builder Magazine shows that large builders gained market share on average each year from 2009 to 2014 in major metropolitan housing markets, before concentrations trended back somewhat in 2015. Figure 1 shows the annual average of the four statistics calculated for this analysis, and charts how these averages changed during the years following the… Read More ›
NAHB Economics analysis of the Survey of Construction (SOC) data shows that less than 9% of new single-family homes started in 2015 are served by individual wells and close to 16% have private septic systems. These shares, however, vary widely across the nine Census divisions with the corresponding shares reaching 39% and 47% in New England – the highest occurrence… Read More ›
A recent NAHB post shows that, after rising to a record high, the size of new single-family homes has leveled off and, as of the second quarter of 2016, is now trending downward slightly. Several things could be responsible. NAHB (and others) have emphasized a changing mix of repeat and first-time home buyers. Before focusing exclusively on this, however, it would be good… Read More ›
Led by the West, the Pending Home Sales Index increased 1.3% in July to the highest level since April, and increased 1.4% year-over-year. The Pending Home Sales Index (PHSI), a forward-looking indicator based on signed contracts reported by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), increased to 111.3 in July from a downwardly revised 109.9 in June. The PHSI surged to… Read More ›
The volume of residential construction loans expanded 3.2% during the second quarter of 2016, marking 13 consecutive quarters of growth. Tight availability of acquisition, development and construction (AD&C) loans is a limiting factor on home building growth, but easing credit conditions and a growing loan base will help expand residential construction in a thin inventory environment. According to data from the FDIC and NAHB analysis,… Read More ›
According to NAHB’s Survey on Acquisition, Development & Construction Financing, residential real estate builders and developers reported that credit conditions for acquisition, development, and single-family construction (AD&C) loans were easier in the second quarter of 2016 than in the first quarter of 2016. Hence the NAHB net tightening index dropped from its level in the first quarter. Following 5 consecutive… Read More ›