Eye On Housing
As revealed in a previous post, 55% of buyers actively searching for a home to buy in the second quarter of 2019 have been looking – unsuccessfully – for three months or longer. Why is it taking these buyers that long to pull the trigger? The most important reason is they can’t find a home at a price they can… Read More ›
A national poll in the second quarter of 2019 revealed that 12% of adults are thinking about buying a home in the next 12 months. Of that group, 41% are already actively engaged in the process of finding a home to purchase, which is a smaller share than a year earlier, when 50% of prospective buyers were engaged in the… Read More ›
In the second quarter of 2019, interest rates on loans for land acquisition, development, and single-family construction (AD&C) continued to drift upward, according to results from NAHB’s quarterly AD&C Financing Survey. As the survey showed, relationships among the various subcategories of AD&C loans remained about the same, with the highest average interest rate—6.59 percent—recorded on loans for land acquisition loans,… Read More ›
An earlier post revealed that only 12% of adults polled in the second quarter of 2019 are prospective home buyers (they are planning to buy a home in the next year). The poll asked these buyers to estimate the share of homes available for-sale in their markets they believed they could afford. As the graph below shows, affordability expectations are… Read More ›
A second quarter 2019 NAHB poll revealed that only 12% of adults are prospective home buyers, i.e. they are planning to buy a home in the next year. These prospective buyers were asked about their expectations for housing availability going forward. As the graph below shows, 20% expect the search for a home to become easier in the months ahead,… Read More ›
The news in today’s newly-built home sales report was found in the estimates for June, rather than July. Contracts for new, single-family home sales decreased in July by 12.8% to a 635,000 seasonally adjusted annual rate according to estimates from the joint release of HUD and the Census Bureau. However, that decline came off an significantly upwardly revised June estimate,… Read More ›
How do homes built-for-rent differ from more common for-sale new single-family homes? This is an important question given recent attention on the built-for-rent sector of the residential construction industry. Second quarter data for 2019 reveal that approximately 42,000 homes were built-for-rent over the last year, representing about 5% of single-family construction. Though this figure continues to trend modestly higher as… Read More ›
According to NAHB analysis of the most recent Census data of Starts and Completions by Purpose and Design, townhouse construction slowed during the second quarter of 2019 after a strong 2018 performance. This market softness matches recent data in the NAHB HBGI, which showed weak construction activity for large metro suburban markets at the start of 2019. Nonetheless, townhouse construction is… Read More ›
A recent study by NAHB reveals that millennials have a much stronger desire for certain bathroom features relative to older generations. The report compiled survey data between 2007 and 2018 and found that the share of home buyers who want whirlpool tubs declines as the older generations age but stays relatively constant for millennials. As of 2018, 70% of millennials… Read More ›
New single-family home size decreased during the second quarter of 2019 as interest rates declined. According to second quarter 2019 data from the Census Quarterly Starts and Completions by Purpose and Design and NAHB analysis, median single-family square floor area ticked down to 2,245 square feet. Average (mean) square footage for new single-family homes declined to 2,465 square feet. On… Read More ›