Industry News
‘The Best of Both Worlds’: A Surprising Look at What the Spring Housing Market Has in Store for Buyers and Sellers
It’s not just the temperatures that are warming up right now. If you didn’t already know, spring is the start of the busiest homebuying period of the year. Houses ooze curb appeal with early flowers in full bloom. Buyers don’t mind trudging to open houses in nicer...
New Construction Activity Surges in February
February 2024 New Residential Construction What happened New residential construction activity surged 10.7% month over month in February, reaching a rate of 1,518,000 annual housing starts (+5.9% year over year). Builder sentiment picked up for the fourth month in a...
Pending Home Sales Post Biggest Jump Since June 2020 as Mortgage Rates Fall
The numbers: U.S. pending home sales shot up in December as falling mortgage rates brought buyers back into the market. Pending home sales rose 8.3% in December from the previous month, according to the monthly index released Friday by the National Association of...
Is the Housing Market Bouncing Back—or Bouncing Back and Forth?
Is the housing market bouncing back in 2024—or just bouncing back and forth? There have been some signs of housing inventory recovering, with the number of homes actively for sale growing by 7.9% year over year in January, according to a recent Realtor.com®...
Will rates keep their downward momentum?
When looking back at the housing market this past year, there were three main storylines that largely defined buying a home – mortgage rates, home prices, and the number of homes for sale, also known as inventory. From a homebuyer’s perspective, all of those...
Fed Pivots and Housing Starts Surge
NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz recently provided the following economic overview in his bi-weekly newsletter Eye on the Economy. Interest rates have pulled back in recent weeks, as markets correctly anticipated a dovish Federal Reserve announcement in December. In...
Housing’s Contribution to Gross Domestic Product
Housing’s combined contribution to GDP generally averages 15-18%, and occurs in two basic ways: Residential investment (averaging roughly 3-5% of GDP), which includes construction of new single-family and multifamily structures, residential remodeling, production of...
When Will Home Prices Drop? Here’s What 6 Economists Say.
Winter is generally a slow season for the real-estate sector, but will it stay frozen or thaw out—and more importantly, will home prices keep rising, or fall? Home prices and mortgage rates show few signs of falling at the end of October, as low inventory spurs...
5 Things You Didn’t Know a VA Loan Could Do for You
Thanks to the bravery and sacrifices of our veterans and active military, the rest of our country’s civilians can live the American dream in safety. So how fitting is it that one tangible way our country says “thank you for your service” to current and former members...
Putting a New Effort into Expanding the Housing Supply
The past decade has seen increasingly tight housing markets due to strong demand and limited supply. Since the Great Recession, the U.S. has not built enough housing to keep pace with demand created by job and population growth, leading to historically low vacancy...