The price of lumber, from framing to structural panels, has increased in recent weeks with some prices rising more than 30%. Softwood lumber prices have been relatively steady since 2014. During this period, the largest one-week price increase of framing lumber (+6.8%), as measured by...
The 2016 top ten publicly-traded builders captured a 27.4% share of new single-family home closings, up from 27.1% in 2015. The 27.4% share in 2016 is out of the 559,000 new home sales reported by the Census Bureau. However, this count represents a smaller share...
The prices of ready-mix concrete, gypsum, and softwood lumber fell 0.2%, 3.5%, and 0.1%, respectively, in January according to the latest Producer Price Index (PPI) release by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. OSB prices ticked up 1.8%, reversing the 1.3% price decline in December. Long-term...
With tax preparation season well underway, it is a good time to examine the use of the home office deduction. Often cited as a “red flag” for tax audits, the home office deduction is a legitimate business deduction particularly important for certain professionals and small...
Across the United States, builders are often charged impact fees by local governments to help pay for infrastructure associated with children in new residential developments entering the public education system. Therefore, builders have an interest in ensuring that the number of school age children in...
The 2015 American Community Survey data shows that New Jersey still leads the nation with the highest average annual real estate tax (RET) bill of $8,180—$7,528 more than RETs paid by Alabama’s homeowners. The overall distribution remained roughly unchanged since 2014, as the composition of...
More NAHB members are familiar with and are using Building Information Modeling (BIM) for their businesses, a recently conducted NAHB survey shows. BIM is a process for managing the information produced during a construction project, in a common format, from the earliest feasibility stage through...
A recent NAHB study shows that the median size of a subdivision in the United States is 25 total acres, and the median number of housing units in a subdivision is 50. The results are based on a survey of development projects currently under way...
The total number of residential construction firms in the country (single-family builders, multifamily builders, and residential remodelers) dropped to around 689,000 in 2012, 12% lower than in 2007, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s Survey of Business Owners (collected only in years ending in ‘2’...
Homeowners saw their tax bills trimmed by more than 0 billion in 2014 according to estimates by the Joint Committee on Taxation (JCT) and NAHB analysis. The mortgage interest deduction (MID) alone accounted for $72.4 billion in tax savings, while the real estate tax deduction...
As it does every year, the Congressional Budget Office (CBO) has released an update to its 10-year baseline budget projections published in January. Individuals as well as businesses of all sizes should take note; the picture that CBO paints of the future of federal government...
A new NAHB Economics research article shows that the effective real estate tax rates vary substantially across and within counties, with the highest rate area displaying rates that are often multiple times higher than the lowest rate areas within the same county. An “effective property...
NAHB’s recently published Housing Preferences of the Boomer Generation shows that homebuyers in the Baby Boom Generation want a suburban neighborhood consisting of all single-family detached homes more often than any other community feature (of the 19 listed), and nearly 80 percent prefer a cul...
Much like it counts people every 10 years, the US government counts American businesses every 5 years. This is done through the Economic Census, which is conducted by the Census Bureau in years ending in 2 and 7. Results for the residential construction industry for...
A previous post discussed how the current shortage of subcontractors in residential construction is becoming more acute. This is significant, because subcontractors are very important to the construction of the typical home. Periodically, NAHB has found it worthwhile to remind the public just how important....
As a share of total taxes collected, real estate property taxes in the United States are responsible for a relatively high share of total government revenues. According to statistics produced by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), the average share of total government...
In the United States, the majority of households own their home. NAHB analysis of international data indicates that the same is true across the European Union (EU). The vast majority of European households own their home as well. However, the incidence of homeownership across the...
Home building, remodeling and the overall residential construction industry support many types of jobs. BLS data from the 2014 Occupational Employment Statistics (OES) Survey, and NAHB analysis, provide a count of these occupation classes. The OES survey defines employment as the number of workers who...
