Eye On Housing
Per the latest results of NAHB’s Home Building Geography Index (HBGI), single-family home building showed higher growth rates across all regional submarkets in the fourth quarter of 2021, relative to the fourth quarter of 2020. Quarterly growth, however, trended downwards for all regions in the third and fourth quarters of 2021. Supply-side constraints and expectations of rising interest rates, particularly… Read More ›
In many communities, 2-4 unit multifamily housing (structures with two, three or four units) is the key to expanding the existing housing stock, in order to solve the housing shortage. Two-four unit multifamily residences such as duplexes, fourplexes, townhomes, courtyard buildings, and cottage courts provide much needed entry-level housing options and/or more affordable housing for the first-time home buyers and… Read More ›
The first quarter of 2020 witnessed a shift in home building towards less population-dense housing markets in the United States, a trend which was greatly hastened by the onset of COVID-19. While most states issued statewide stay-at-home orders with exemption for construction, some of the hardest-hit states had no exemptions for construction when the pandemic first hit. While NAHB’s Home… Read More ›
The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to hasten a housing trend already taking place across the nation – residential construction activity that is expanding at a more rapid rate in lower density markets such as smaller cities and rural areas. This conclusion is among the findings of the latest quarterly National Association of Home Builders Home Building Geography Index (HBGI). An… Read More ›
The National Association of Home Builders’ Home Building Geography Index (HBGI) tracks the markets of single-family and multifamily residential construction and their recovery following the Great Recession. In the first quarter of 2019, the first “cut” of the HBGI was introduced, which was an urban density-based delineation of the housing market into seven geographical “regions”. The first quarter HBGI analysis… Read More ›
When NAHB’s Home Building Geography Index (HBGI) was unveiled, it examined construction along a population density-based delineation of U.S. counties into such geographies as suburbs, exurbs, rural areas, etc. The second quarter release introduces a new geography, manufacturing areas, while updating the first regional tracking, as described here. Of the seven “regions” of the HBGI, only exurbs and rural areas… Read More ›
The Mortgage Bankers Association’s (MBA) latest National Delinquency Survey, 2nd quarter of 2019 data, reveal state-level variation in the timeliness of mortgage payments. Overall, the “seriously delinquent” rate, i.e., the proportion of home mortgage loans that are 90+ days delinquent or in the process of foreclosure, remained unchanged at 2.0% from the previous quarter1. The number of loans, however, in… Read More ›
After several years of steady construction gains, single-family construction in small cities experienced a net deceleration of growth going into 2019. Such areas represent 37% of all single-family construction nationwide. With a population of nearly 95 million, small cities in the U.S. account for about 30% of the U.S. population and therefore serve as a good “demographic and economic microcosm”… Read More ›
As tracked by the NAHB HBGI, the changing geographic shares of single-family construction across the U.S. reflect the evolution of home building. As can be seen from the above figure, the market share of single-family permits for small city core areas declined slightly over the last eight years, starting initially from a little less than 30% of single-family home construction… Read More ›
Following the Great Recession, the National Association of Home Builders created the Leading Market Index (LMI) to track the recovery of the housing market based on three factors: employment, house price indices, and housing construction. As the recovery transitioned into a period in which supply-side elements (land, labor, lumber, lending and laws) were limiting factors and housing affordability declined, the… Read More ›