Eye On Housing
The Q2 2020 results of NAHB’s Home Building Geography Index (HBGI) show geographical trends of the home building industry as the novel coronavirus, COVID-19, spread quickly through the United States. Although the pandemic caused widespread economic impacts for many businesses, housing has weathered the economic storm, rebounding quickly from an April slump. Moreover, data from the second quarter NAHB HBGI… Read More ›
The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to hasten a housing trend already taking place across the nation – residential construction activity that is expanding at a more rapid rate in lower density markets such as smaller cities and rural areas. This conclusion is among the findings of the latest quarterly National Association of Home Builders Home Building Geography Index (HBGI). An… Read More ›
Supply and resulting affordability challenges for millennials were highlighted in the most recent NAHB Home Building Geography Index (HBGI). The third quarter HBGI also offers more region-specific insights of single- and multifamily home building trends, including their connections to millennial-intensive areas. Single-family home building in rural areas posted a solid growth rate of 1.1% for the third quarter of 2019,… Read More ›
The second quarter of 2019’s recent permit data shed new light on NAHB’s Home Building Geography Index (HBGI), not only in manufacturing, which is its newest cut, but also in its first vein of analysis, a population density-based delineation of all the counties in the U.S., known as regions. New permits for multifamily dwellings have historically been the highest in… Read More ›
The National Association of Home Builders’ Home Building Geography Index (HBGI) tracks the markets of single-family and multifamily residential construction and their recovery following the Great Recession. In the first quarter of 2019, the first “cut” of the HBGI was introduced, which was an urban density-based delineation of the housing market into seven geographical “regions”. The first quarter HBGI analysis… Read More ›
When NAHB’s Home Building Geography Index (HBGI) was unveiled, it examined construction along a population density-based delineation of U.S. counties into such geographies as suburbs, exurbs, rural areas, etc. The second quarter release introduces a new geography, manufacturing areas, while updating the first regional tracking, as described here. Of the seven “regions” of the HBGI, only exurbs and rural areas… Read More ›
After several years of steady construction gains, single-family construction in small cities experienced a net deceleration of growth going into 2019. Such areas represent 37% of all single-family construction nationwide. With a population of nearly 95 million, small cities in the U.S. account for about 30% of the U.S. population and therefore serve as a good “demographic and economic microcosm”… Read More ›
NAHB analysis of multifamily construction permits over the last four quarters indicates relatively higher growth rates in less populated areas. A prior post reviewed the newly released Home Building Geography Index (HBGI) through the perspective of single-family permit activity. This post examines multifamily construction as classified into the seven HBGI regional geographies, as differentiated by urban density. Economic theory suggests… Read More ›
NAHB’s recently published Housing Preferences of the Boomer Generation shows that homebuyers in the Baby Boom Generation want a suburban neighborhood consisting of all single-family detached homes more often than any other community feature (of the 19 listed), and nearly 80 percent prefer a cul de sac over efficient traffic flow when given the choice. These results are based on a survey… Read More ›