Eye On Housing
Of the 848,000 single-family homes started in the U.S. in 2017, roughly 79,000 were nonmetropolitan—that is, they were built outside one of the officially-defined metropolitan areas—as reported in a recent NAHB study, At 79,000, nonmetropolitan single-family starts were up 40 percent from the trough in 2011, compared to a 97 percent for single-family starts overall. The NAHB study is based on territory… Read More ›
New NAHB research shows that the share of foreign-born workers in the US construction labor force has been rising since the housing recovery got underway. Immigrant workers now account for close to one in four workers, the highest share recorded by the American Community Survey (ACS). The time-series analysis shows that the rising share of immigrants in construction cannot be… Read More ›
NAHB analysis of information published in Builder Magazine shows that large builders gained market share on average each year from 2009 to 2014 in major metropolitan housing markets, before concentrations trended back somewhat in 2015. Figure 1 shows the annual average of the four statistics calculated for this analysis, and charts how these averages changed during the years following the… Read More ›
NAHB analysis of the Census Bureau’s quarterly tax data shows that $519 billion in taxes were paid by property owners over the four quarters ending in Q3 2015. This represents a $19 billion—or 3.9%—increase over the previous trailing four quarters, the largest annual increase since early 2010. Property taxes accounted for 39.1% the largest share, of state and local tax… Read More ›
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and the Standard and Poor’s/Case-Shiller recently released their respective home price indices for April. House prices have been recovering since reaching the bottom of the downturn in 2012. Both the new and existing single-family homes’ median sale prices are presented along with the home price index. All three indicators tell a similar story of rapid… Read More ›
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) and the Standard and Poor’s/Case-Shiller recently released the Home Price Index (HPI) for March. The price index reported by the Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) decelerated in March, slowing to an annualized growth rate of 4.2% from 7.8% in February. Monthly growth rates have been volatile but have trended down since the recent peak… Read More ›
Consumer sentiment and consumer confidence are two indexes showing consumers’ perceptions of current business, income and employment conditions, as well as their expectations for the future’s economy. They are both highly (inversely) correlated with the unemployment rate. Based on the data from the past three decades, the Consumer Confidence Index and the Consumer Sentiment Index increase when the unemployment rate… Read More ›
Consumer sentiment and consumer confidence are two indexes showing consumers’ perceptions of current business, income and employment conditions, as well as their expectations for the near future’s economy. Figure 1 shows both the University of Michigan Index of Consumer Sentiment and the Conference Board Consumer Confidence Index are highly inversely correlated with the unemployment rate. High unemployment drives down… Read More ›
The Federal Housing Finance Agency (FHFA) recently released the House Price Index (HPI) data for February, 2015. Figure 1 shows the House Price Index (HPI) data from January 1991 to February 2015. The annual growth rate is also presented in Figure 1. House price appreciation has been volatile but averaged approximately 5% from 1991 to 2003 prior to the housing… Read More ›
Recently released data by Standard and Poor’s (S&P) and Case-Shiller indicates that its measure of house prices, the House Price Index – National, rose by 5.1% on a year-over-year seasonally adjusted basis (5.1% on a not seasonally adjusted basis). This is the 28th consecutive month of year-over-year increases in the house price index. Over this period of more than two… Read More ›