Eye On Housing
After a prior cooling trend for the volume of new home sales, sales contracts increased 1.5% in August according to estimates from the Census Bureau and HUD. The August seasonally adjusted annual rate (740,000) was 24% lower than a year ago, when an unsustainable rebound took hold in the market. Higher prices have also affected housing affordability, with new home… Read More ›
A reversal is taking place in the construction pipeline. Since early 2013, there have been consistently more multifamily units (residences within 2+ unit properties) under construction relative to single-family homes. This was due to multifamily construction recovering more quickly in the years after the Great Recession, as well as years of underbuilding in the single-family sector. However, as of July,… Read More ›
The Federal Reserve has been supporting the housing market during the virus crisis, the 2020 recession, and the subsequent, ongoing recovery via asset-backed purchases (among other tools), including $40 billion a month of mortgage-backed security (MBS) purchases. These MBS purchases have held interest rates lower than they otherwise would have been. Today, the Fed moved closer to announcing a tapering… Read More ›
Total housing starts increased 3.9% in August, due to strength for multifamily development. According to data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Census Bureau, single-family starts were down 2.8% for the month, while overall multifamily starts was up 21% in August. The August total starts reading of 1.62 million starts is the number of… Read More ›
Builder confidence inched up in September on lower lumber prices and strong housing demand, even as the housing sector continues to grapple with building material supply chain issues and labor challenges. Ending a three-month decline, builder sentiment in the market for newly built single-family homes edged up one point to 76 in September, according to the National Association of Home… Read More ›
In the July labor market data, job openings for the overall economy increased to 10.9 million open positions. What had been a challenge in certain sectors, like construction, continues as a broad labor access issue as businesses seek workers as the economy reopens. The count of open construction jobs weakened in July to 321,000 unfilled positions, according to data from… Read More ›
Of the roughly 990,000 single-family homes started in 2020, 65.3 percent came with porches, according to NAHB tabulation of data from the Survey of Construction (SOC, conducted by the U.S. Census Bureau with partial funding from the Department of Housing and Urban Development). This marks the third time the share of single-family homes with porches has broken above the 65 percent barrier. The… Read More ›
In the second quarter of 2021, interest rates on three of the four categories of loans tracked in NAHB’s Survey on Acquisition, Development & Construction (AD&C) Financing continued the downward trend that has prevailed since the third quarter of last year. The average effective rate (based on rate of return to the lender over the assumed life of the loan… Read More ›
As the market has cooled due to higher costs, July recorded a slight gain of 1% for sales of newly-constructed single family homes, according to estimates from the Census Bureau and HUD. The July seasonally adjusted annual rate (708K) was 27% lower than a year ago, due to builders slowing sales as a consequence of higher material and other costs… Read More ›
According to NAHB analysis of quarterly Census data, the market share of rental units of multifamily construction starts remained elevated at 95.2% during the second quarter of 2021. In contrast, the historical low share of 47% was set during the third quarter of 2005, during the condo building boom. An average share of 80% was registered during the 1980-2002 period…. Read More ›