Eye On Housing
One factor holding back an even stronger rebound in home construction is the lack of accessible Acquisition, Development and Construction (AD&C) loans. While it appears the period of dramatic declines of the outstanding stock of AD&C loans ended in 2012, there has not yet been a robust expansion of lending consistent with current demand for home building. According to data from the FDIC, the outstanding stock of… Read More ›
Tag Archive for ‘home building’
AD&C Lending in the 4th Quarter of 2012
One factor holding back an even stronger rebound in home construction is the lack of accessible Acquisition, Development and Construction (AD&C) loans. While it appears the period of dramatic declines of the outstanding stock of AD&C loans ended in 2012, there has not yet been a robust expansion of lending consistent with current demand for home building. According to data from the FDIC, the outstanding stock of… Read More ›
Eye on the Economy: Low Inventories Driving Permit Growth
*Eye on the Economy is an NAHB newsletter that is published every two weeks and takes a larger view of recent economic and housing policy news. While recent economic reports suggest that home building took a pause at the beginning of 2013, leading indicators point to more growth for housing in the months ahead. Per data from the Census Bureau,… Read More ›
One Point in the HMI Eventually Means 37,000 Jobs
Every month, the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) provides an overall measure of builder confidence in the strength of the single-family housing market. Also every month, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) produces estimates of employment in residential construction (or at least it has since 2001, when it began to split jobs in the various trades into residential… Read More ›
Builders Selling Well
New home sales surged forward in January and inventories dipped to their lowest in 8 years as housing demand continues to return. On an annual seasonally-adjusted basis, new homes sold at a 437,000 pace in January, up 15.6% from December and 28.9% from a year ago. The improvement was broad based in all four regions. The surge in sales and… Read More ›
Producer Prices in January – Soft Prices, Except for Building Materials
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) released the Producer Price Indexes (PPI) for January. Energy prices continued their recent decline, the index for finished goods was pushed up modestly by an increase in the price of food goods, while core prices (i.e., excluding food and energy) rose by 0.2%, the average over the last year. But the prices for certain… Read More ›
Fourth Quarter 2012 Custom Home Building
Census Data from the Quarterly Starts and Completions by Purpose and Design survey indicate that while the growth in custom home building starts has been relatively flat by count, the market share for owner- and contractor-built homes has shrunk due to a rebound in other types of home building. The onset of the housing crisis and the Great Recession interrupted a 15-year long… Read More ›
Multifamily Production Falls Back to November Rate
The Census Bureau’s preliminary estimate of starts in buildings with five or more apartments for January came in at 260,000 (at a seasonally adjusted annual rate). As predicted in last month’s post, a rate well in excess of 300,000 proved too high to sustain. In fact, the five-plus starts rate for December was revised upward, from 330,000 to 352,000—so the preliminary… Read More ›
Refinancings Contribute to A Lower Average Mortgage Debt Burden
Mortgage applications eased for the second consecutive week. According to the Mortgage Bankers Association, mortgage application activity, which includes both refinancing and home purchase demand, was 1.7% lower on a seasonally adjusted basis in the week ending Feb. 15. In the week ending February 8, the market index fell by 6.4%. The most recent decline in weekly seasonally adjusted mortgage… Read More ›
Inventory of Existing Homes Falls in January
Existing home sales increased 0.4% in January from a downwardly revised level in December, and were up 9.1% from the same period a year ago. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported that January 2013 total existing home sales were at a seasonally adjusted rate of 4.92 million units combined for single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops. That compares to… Read More ›