Mortgage rates that hit more than a 20-year high, coupled with elevated construction costs and excessive regulatory costs, left housing affordability in the fourth quarter of 2023 virtually unchanged from the previous quarter and holding near its lowest level in more than a decade. According…
The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) released new 30-year population growth projections that include substantial upward revisions to the net immigration rates and slightly lower projected rates of mortality from COVID-19. As a result, the revised population estimates now include an additional 8.9 million people in…
Per the Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) survey through the week ending February 2nd, total mortgage activity increased 3.7% from the previous week, and the average 30-year fixed-rate mortgage (FRM) rate rose two basis points to 6.80%. The 30-year FRM has floated around 6.8% for much…
The latest CPS/HVS data shows that the overall homeownership rate was 65.7% in the last quarter of 2023. This was 3.5 percentage points lower from the peak of 69.4% in 2004. In this post, we focus on the homeownership rates by race and ethnicity over…
According to the data released by Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), private fixed investment in student dormitories inched up 1.2% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate (SAAR) of $3.96 billion in the last quarter of 2023, after a 5.5% increase in the third quarter. Private…
The U.S. economy entered the new year with a strong gain in payroll employment and an unchanged unemployment rate. Job gains in November and December were much stronger than initially estimated, according to revisions of the establishment survey data. January’s jobs report shows that the…
NAHB analysis of Census data shows that private residential construction spending rose 1.4% in December, marking three months of gains. It stood at a seasonally adjusted annual pace of $911.7 billion. The 2023 annual spending on private residential construction was $864.9 billion, 5.8% lower than…
