In July 2018, the United States Trade Representative (USTR) announced its intention to levy tariffs on a series of imports from China. USTR rolled out proposed tariffs in three waves, with the third list (List 3) covering approximately $200 billion worth of Chinese imports. The...
In the average new home, 28.0 percent of the finished floor space is allocated to bedrooms and 11.2 percent to the kitchen area, according to a recent NAHB study. The questions covered 13 specific types of areas or rooms, plus a catch-all “other” category for...
Property taxes vary widely across states both in terms of annual taxes paid as well as effective tax rates. In 2017, the difference between average real estate taxes paid by New Jersey and Alabama home owners was nearly $8,000. New Jersey continued its perennial distinction...
Vacancy rates are one of the key statistics NAHB Economics tracks to judge the health and direction of the housing market. The currently low homeowner and rental vacancy rates are typically interpreted as a sign of tight housing markets, with lower vacancy rates signaling a...
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA), signed into law in late 2017, created a new section of the tax code—199A. Section 199A provides a 20% deduction for “qualified business income” generated by pass-thru entities such as LLCs, partnerships, and S-corporations. The law went a...
As tax reform negotiations pressed forward last year, there were high hopes that the dreaded individual alternative minimum tax (AMT) would be repealed. While the corporate AMT was abolished permanently, unfortunately, the individual AMT still exists under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). However,...
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) added numerous temporary provisions to the tax code. Temporary tax law can be difficult to track and compliance can be expensive. Earlier this year, the Joint Committee on Taxation released a guide to expiring tax provisions, sorted by...
Before the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) went into effect, a business’s net operating losses (NOLs) could generally be carried back two years and carried forward 20 years to offset taxable income. Tax reform, however, repealed the two-year carryback allowance and other special carryback...
The United States Post Office has been attempting to reduce or eliminate sidewalk and curbside delivery of mail to individual homes, especially in new subdivisions. Instead, the Post Office now wants to deliver mail primarily to centralized or “cluster” mailboxes, each serving multiple homes in...
Ever since the inception of the U.S. income tax in 1913, home owners have been able to deduct interest paid on home equity loans (HELOCs). The Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1987 limited the mortgage interest and HELOC deductions to interest paid on $1,000,000 and...
NAHB analysis of the most recent Quarterly Sales by Price and Financing published by the U.S. Census Bureau reveals that conventional loans accounted for 73.8% of new home sales in the first quarter of 2018, the highest share in a decade. Conventional loans financed over...
The business interest deduction has been a staple of the tax code for over a century. Deducting interest is important in home building, as debt is a critical financing tool and access to equity markets is challenging for the majority of home builders. The new...
The prior two Tax Reform Toolkit posts have explained the new 20 percent pass-thru deduction (i.e. 199A) as it applies to pass-thru owners with: Less than $315,000 (married filer) or $157,500 (single) of taxable income, or More than $415,000 (married) or $207,500 (single) of taxable...
About two years ago, NAHB reported that 22 percent of single-family builders had used aerial drones (or unmanned aircraft systems, as the Department of Defense calls them) at least once in their construction businesses. But the times they are a-changing. When we revisited the issue...
The new NAHB study presents the most recent and comprehensive estimates of home building employment, including self-employed workers, by state. NAHB Economics estimates that out of 9.8 million people working in construction in 2016, more than 3.8 million people worked in residential construction, accounting for...
Eye on Housing’s first Tax Reform Toolkit post explained the basics of the new 20% deduction for pass-thru income (i.e. the 199A deduction). That article focused on how the deduction works for a taxpayer who has less than $315,000 of taxable income if married and...
According to the 2016 Survey of Consumer Finances (SCF), nationally, the primary residence represents the largest asset category on the balance sheets of households in 2016 (as shown in Figure 1 below). At $24.2 trillion, the primary residence accounted for about one quarter of all...
Prices paid for building materials increased across the board in February. The indexes for softwood lumber (+5.6%), gypsum products (+4.2%), OSB (+3.1%), ready-mix concrete (+0.4%), and inputs to residential construction less labor (+1.0%) all increased, according to the latest Producer Price Index (PPI) release by...
