Eye On Housing
Home building data for January showed declines for new home sales and housing construction. Builder confidence also declined but remains in positive territory. NAHB’s forecast is for continued, modest growth for single-family construction and a slowing of the growth rate for multifamily development in 2016. The NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index measure of single-family builder sentiment declined three points in… Read More ›
Tag Archive for ‘starts’
Multifamily Building: Fourth Quarter Data
An elevated market share for rental multifamily homes is holding typical new apartment size below levels seen during the pre-recession period. However, as multifamily developers build more for-sale housing units in the years ahead, the average size of multifamily homes is likely to rise. The recent pattern of change in the size of new multifamily units stands in contrast to the post-recession increase in the size of… Read More ›
Single-Family Built-for-Rent Construction
The total number of single-family homes built-for-rent was relatively unchanged in 2015 compared to 2014. However, the single-family built-for-rent market is a small portion of the total market, so care must be taken when identifying trends. According to data from the Census Bureau’s Quarterly Starts and Completions by Purpose and Design and NAHB analysis, the market share of single-family homes built-for-rent, as measured on a… Read More ›
Flat Trends for Custom Home Building
NAHB’s analysis of Census Data from the Quarterly Starts and Completions by Purpose and Design survey indicates that the number of custom home building starts (homes built on an owner’s land, with either the owner or a builder acting as the general contractor) posted a slight increase on a year-over year basis as of the final quarter of 2015. There were 41,000 total custom… Read More ›
Little Change for New Single-Family Home Size
The typical size of newly built single-family homes was effectively unchanged from the third to fourth quarter of 2015. The current data is consistent with the general trend of flat growth for the size of typical newly-built homes, a pattern that took hold during 2014. As first-time buyers return to the market, typical home size is expected to trend somewhat lower. According to fourth quarter 2015 data from the Census Quarterly Starts… Read More ›
Housing Starts Weaken in January
The pace of housing construction weakened at the start of 2016, as total housing starts fell 3.8% in January, according to estimates from the Census Bureau and the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. The rate of single-family construction declined 3.9% from December to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 731,000 units. The decline was consistent with the drop in… Read More ›
Home Construction Up for 2015
With the December report on housing starts and permits, preliminary totals for 2015 are now available. Total housing starts at 1.11 million were up 10.8% in 2015 compared to 2014. Single-family starts were up 10.4% to 715,300 and multifamily starts were up 11.4% to 396,000. All four census regions also experienced increases in single-family starts for 2015. The monthly change… Read More ›
Housing Under Construction – November Data
Due to the surge in multifamily development and the ongoing modest growth for single-family, there has been a noticeable shift in the market shares of housing units under construction. The Census housing starts data illustrate a trend to more multifamily units in the production pipeline. Using the seasonally adjusted Census estimates, at the end of November there were 549,000 multifamily units… Read More ›
Builders’ Sentiment Steady
Single-family home builders sentiment remained near the same level established in June 2015. The NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index fell one point to 61 in December. The index has been between 60 and 62 for six of the last seven months with only October rising briefly to 65. The three components mirrored the trend with current sales falling one point… Read More ›
Housing Construction Continues Forward
Permits to build new homes increased 4.1% in October to a level of 1.15 million per year. Both single-family and multifamily levels increased by 2.4% and 6.8% respectively. On a year-to-date basis, total permits are up 11.9%; single-family are up 8.6% and multifamily are up 17.2% as the housing market continues its modest pace of recovery. Housing starts were down… Read More ›