Eye On Housing
Housing affordability held steady at its lowest level in nearly a decade, as higher home prices offset lower mortgage rates to keep the affordability rate flat in the third quarter of 2021. In the months ahead, however, supply-chain disruptions and the prospect of higher interest rates will continue to threaten housing affordability. According to the National Association of Home Builders… Read More ›
An earlier post revealed that 66% of buyers who were actively engaged in the process of finding a home in the third quarter of 2021 have spent 3+ months searching for a home without success. For only the third time in this series history, the top reason these long-time searchers haven’t pulled the trigger is not because they can’t find… Read More ›
After growing steadily for six straight quarters, and peaking at 61% in the second quarter of 2021, the share of prospective buyers actively trying to find a home to buy declined to 57% in the third quarter. This is an indication that fast-growing home prices have begun to discourage a segment of potential buyers from getting past the planning stage…. Read More ›
In the third quarter of 2021, 73% of buyers estimate they can afford less than half the homes available for-sale in their markets. That share is up from 71% the prior quarter, 65% the quarter before that, and 63% in the final quarter of 2020. This steady increase is evidence that double-digit increases in home prices have eroded the positive… Read More ›
Housing affordability has been a key driver of the suburban shift of home building activity over the last year and a half. As the following analysis from the NAHB Home Building Geography Index reveals, lower density markets in general have higher housing affordability conditions, which explains the shift in construction activity. The second quarter HBGI examined county-level Price-to-Income ratios. The… Read More ›
Housing affordability has gained increased attention in recent quarters due growing home prices and rents. For the second quarter of 2021, NAHB’s Home Building Geography Index (HBGI) explored a geographic measure of housing affordability using Price-to-Income ratios of all counties in the United States1 to map the geography of single-family and multifamily construction. The principal findings of this new classification… Read More ›
Soaring building material costs, high demand and low inventory have added tens of thousands of dollars to the price of a new home and caused housing affordability to fall to its lowest level in nearly a decade during the second quarter of 2021. According to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index (HOI), 56.6 percent of… Read More ›
In the final quarter of 2019, a series-high of 82% of prospective buyers could afford less than half the homes available in their markets. The share went on to decline throughout 2020 (i.e. affordability perceptions improved), reaching 63% by the final quarter of that year. But affordability expectations have worsened recently. In the first and second quarters of 2021, the… Read More ›
The share of prospective home buyers looking to buy a newly-built home peaked at 42% in the fourth quarter of 2020, before falling to 38% and 33%, respectively, in the first two quarters of 2021. The drop is most likely the direct result of strong gains in new home prices in 2021, which have been driven by double-digit growth in… Read More ›
Recent Census data, combined with NAHB survey results, illustrate the way in which home buyers in the lower one-fourth of the market have been squeezed entirely out of the market for new construction, and forced to look exclusively in the stock of existing homes—where the inventory of homes available for sale remains in a historically low range (at a 2.5-month… Read More ›