Eye On Housing
The US Census Bureau and HUD reported new home sales for August remained virtually unchanged from a revised July level at 373,000. The last two months set the highest levels in new home sales since the momentary bump provided by the home buyer tax credit in 2010. The current levels are driven by underlying pent up demand, buyers taking advantage… Read More ›
Tag Archive for ‘home building’
The Drop in Property Taxes that Never Happened
Property taxes are an important source of revenue for state and local governments to finance services, particularly education. Some analysts expected large declines in property tax collections for state and local governments in the wake of the Great Recession. However, this drop has never happened, despite historic price declines for owner-occupied housing. In fact, recent data demonstrate that property tax… Read More ›
How Homeowners’ Tax Rates Could Go Down, but Their Tax Bills Go Up
NAHB has published a new paper analyzing the mortgage interest deduction (MID). The MID has been in the news a lot recently, as the talk heats up of possible tax hikes in 2013 . The new research adds to NAHB’s existing tax policy analysis by providing a means to examine the possible impacts of future comprehensive tax reform proposals. Analysis of “winners” and “losers” of tax reform requires data… Read More ›
Household Balance Sheet Repair Takes a Step Back, but Mortgage Debt Down $1 Trillion
NAHB has been tracking two key economic variables that are critical for a robust and sustainable rebound in housing and the economy as a whole: the ratio of household net worth to disposable income (NW/DPI) and the personal savings rate. The NW/DPI ratio can be thought of as a measure of the health of household balance sheets. It tells us… Read More ›
Eye on the Economy: NAHB Surveys Point to Growing Optimism for Housing
*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. A set of recent NAHB surveys suggest that the growth in housing will continue. This is a promising sign for home builders, remodelers and other stakeholders in the housing sector. It is also a… Read More ›
NAHB’s Construction Forecast Webinar
NAHB’s Fall 2012 Construction Forecast Webinar will be held on Wednesday, October 17, 2012 from 2:00pm to 4:00pm ET. How is the market unfolding as the housing recovery quickens? David Crowe, Chief Economist, NAHB Mark Zandi, Chief Economist, Moody’s Economy.com Robert Denk, Assistant Vice President for Forecasting and Analysis, NAHB The fragile state of the national and world market Foundations… Read More ›
Existing Home Sales Increase
Existing home sales in August increased 7.8% from July, and were up 9.3% from the same period a year ago. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported August 2012 total existing home sales were at a seasonally adjusted rate of 4.82 million units combined for single-family homes, townhomes, condominiums and co-ops. That compares to 4.47 million units in July and… Read More ›
Multifamily Starts Post Small Drop in August, Remain Strong
In August, the seasonally adjusted annual rate of starts in buildings with five or more apartments was 208,000, according to the latest release from the Census Bureau’s Manufacturing and Construction Division. This is a 2.8% decrease from the downwardly revised July starts rate. Despite the monthly drop, this rate is nearly 37% higher than the August 2011 rate of 5+ unit starts. … Read More ›
Housing Starts Continue Recovery
Housing starts increased 2.1% in August to a 750,000 seasonally-adjusted annualized (SAAR) level. The increase was concentrated entirely in the single-family sector increasing 5.5% to an SAAR of 535,000, the highest since early 2010 just before the home buyer tax credit expired. The improvement was broad based with increases in all four Census regions. Multifamily starts dropped back to 215,000 SAAR, but the… Read More ›
The Geographic Distribution of Households with Nonrelatives
A component of pent-up housing demand is the situation of collapsed households — individuals who reside with another household. From a data perspective, we can identify some of these households by estimating the number of housing units that contain individuals who are not related to each other. This is just a part of pent-up demand of course, as it excludes adult children who live with… Read More ›