Filtered by Subscriptions: US Housing Use setting US Housing
The sharp rise in housing starts in July is an encouraging sign that the recovery in construction activity is getting back on track. Booming homebuilder confidence points to further gains to come. … Housing Starts …
19th August 2014
Mortgage credit conditions are loosening once again and the demand for mortgages is strengthening. Moreover, this is despite the introduction of the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau’s ability-to-repay rule and qualified mortgage standard at the start of …
14th August 2014
The downward trend in mortgage rates seen over the first half of the year has ended, with rates unchanged in July. That helps explain why mortgage applications for refinancing fell during the month. A further drop in applications for house purchase is …
6th August 2014
According to CoreLogic, house prices only managed to hold their ground in June, and have not seen a month-on-month rise since March. A loosening in supply conditions has helped to rein in house price inflation, and only modest gains can be expected for …
5th August 2014
The housing market has yet to shake off the weakness seen in the early stages of the year. Despite increasingly solid economic data and a drop in mortgage interest rates, mortgage applications and new home sales are very subdued. And the rise in existing …
4th August 2014
The value of banks’ outstanding residential mortgage lending is rising but the number of new loans remains static. This divergence is explained by a sharp rise in the value of the typical mortgage loan, itself a reflection of the rationing of mortgage …
31st July 2014
June’s new home sales data point to a market that is struggling to capitalise on the recovery that is underway in the rest of the US economy. Yet there are good reasons to expect new home sales to join in the upturn over the remainder of the year. … New …
24th July 2014
The rise in existing home sales reflects the recent decline in mortgage interest rates,stronger job growth and the continued unwinding of the weather effect from earlier inthe year. While the legacy of earlier falls means that existing home sales will be …
22nd July 2014
The sharp drop in housing starts in June suggests that the shortage of labour and lots is weighing on construction volumes. But the excess of household formation over homebuilding suggests that the outlook for housing starts is positive. … Housing Starts …
17th July 2014
Homebuilders are encountering shortages of skilled labour in the carpentry and framing trades required early in the homebuilding process. These shortages are leading to higher new build house prices and longer building timelines, although refused, lost or …
16th July 2014
The pick-up in job creation, the return of more clement weather and the decline in mortgage interest rates helped home sales rise by a strong 6.1% m/m in May. However, house prices are still responding to the weakening in home sales earlier in the year, …
9th July 2014
The modest rate of house price appreciation on some secondary measures stems from the fact that they exclude foreclosures and distressed sales. The Case-Shiller and CoreLogic indices, by contrast, are still posting strong year-on-year gains in part …
3rd July 2014
The further slight decline in mortgage interest rates in June was enough to bump up mortgage applications for remortgaging. But that was offset by a drop in mortgage applications for home purchase, which is the more important indicator when it comes to …
2nd July 2014
The monthly pace of house price gains slowed for the fourth consecutive month in May, to just 0.1% m/m. Looking ahead, loosening housing market supply conditions will keep house price inflation subdued for the foreseeable future. … CoreLogic House …
1st July 2014
The rising inventory of homes for sale and the hit to housing demand from the severe winter weather are feeding through to slower house price inflation. Although home sales will now recover, a further rise in supply will ensure that house price inflation …
30th June 2014
The sharp slowdown in house price inflation in April is unlikely to be a one-off. House price gains will slow further now that housing supply conditions are loosening. … Case-Shiller Prices & New Home Sales …
24th June 2014
The strong rise in existing home sales in May probably reflects the milder weather and the 35 basis point decline in 30-year mortgage interest rates so far in 2014. We expect the improvement in home sales to remain on track even as mortgage rates start to …
23rd June 2014
The fall in housing starts in May is not a surprise given the size of the gain the month before, although the size of the decline was bigger than we or the consensus expected. Looking ahead, there are plenty of reasons to expect housing starts to rise, …
17th June 2014
Tentative signs that rising house prices are increasing the ability of many households to meet minimum deposit criteria increase the chances that the most recent jump in mortgage applications might finally mark the start of a more sustained improvement. …
13th June 2014
The most recent data have provided support for our view that the sharp drop in sales and starts seen over the past few months would prove temporary. New and existing home sales, as well as housing starts, all rose. To be fair, the gains were typically …
11th June 2014
The fall in mortgage applications for home purchase over the past week left them languishing at a six-week low. But with housing still undervalued, the economy gathering momentum and mortgage interest rates dropping sharply, we are optimistic that this …
4th June 2014
CoreLogic house price data for April show that the annual pace of house price gains moderated for the second consecutive month. While the process still has some way to go, the data add to the evidence that looser supply conditions are starting to deliver …
3rd June 2014
The US housing market will recover from its current soft patch to post strong gains in home sales and housing starts over the next couple of years. By contrast house price growth will slow, but this will help avoid overvaluation and put the price rebound …
2nd June 2014
North Dakota owes its position as the strongest performing housing market in the US to the scale of shale oil and gas production in the State. Housing markets in a number of the other States sharing in the shale revolution are also outperforming. While …
28th May 2014
The first quarter Case-Shiller figures provide further evidence that the slowdown in the pace of house price gains that we have been expecting is now in train. It’s not implausible that the year-on-year rate of price growth will fall from above 10% to …
27th May 2014
In April, new home sales reversed most of the previous month’s decline to stand just4% below the high seen in October last year. Alongside yesterday’s modest rise inexisting home sales, the data indicate that there is still life in the US housing …
23rd May 2014
Existing home sales registered their first rise in four months in April. And to the extent that a lack of stock has been holding back activity rates in recent months, the further rise in the number of homes on the market was another sign that the housing …
22nd May 2014
Last year’s rise in mortgage interest rates may have dented home sales and housing starts, but it has not dented the downward trend in the number of US households suffering mortgage payment problems. Accordingly, the delinquency data do little to support …
15th May 2014
Fed Chair Janet Yellen expressed worries about the resilience of the housing recovery in her testimony to Congress last week. But the recent sales and mortgage lending figures have been more encouraging. … Positive signs on home sales and mortgage …
12th May 2014
The rise in mortgage applications for home purchase in April, alongside the recent pick-up in the Fed’s measure of the value of residential mortgage lending, are encouraging signs that mortgage lending is increasing. Admittedly, none of this changes the …
7th May 2014
House price gains have held steady at 11%-12% y/y for a year now. But the tight supply conditions which have driven these gains are now loosening, pointing to a moderation in price rises before too long. … CoreLogic House Prices …
6th May 2014
The increase in the share of households renting to a 19-year high in Q1, and the low supply of homes entering the rental market, look like boons for both rental value growth and multi-family homebuilding. … Homeownership & Vacancy Rates & Case-Shiller …
29th April 2014
It is too early to take the weakening in activity as evidence that the housing recovery is over. The soft numbers could plausibly be the result of the temporary slowdown in job growth, the recent severe weather or even simple measurement error. If so, …
24th April 2014
The plunge in new home sales in March raises difficult questions about the sustainability of the housing recovery. But with other parts of the economy starting to shrug off the winter malaise, we are not sounding the alarm bells just yet. … New Home …
23rd April 2014
The latest small decline in existing home sales cannot easily be passed off as weather-related weakness, as those regions which suffered most from the severe weather saw sales bounce back in March. But at least the composition of existing home sales is …
22nd April 2014
The below-expectations increase in housing starts in March, which made up for only one-fifth of earlier weather-related falls, suggests that the shortage of labour and lots is constraining the improvement in homebuilding that the fundamentals would seem …
16th April 2014
The unprecedented negative spread between jumbo and conforming mortgage interest rates did not last for long. But the normalisation of the gap between jumbo and conforming rates marks an important stage in the return of private capital to the mortgage …
11th April 2014
The recent housing market activity data have been weak more or less across the board, with new and existing homes sales, as well as housing starts, all declining in February. These falls were largely the result of the recent severe weather, as well as the …
10th April 2014
The slight increase in mortgage applications for home purchase in March was a step in the right direction. But mortgage demand will have to rise much more strongly than this if mortgage-dependent buyers are going to play a larger role in the housing …
2nd April 2014
The CoreLogic measure reported that house prices continued to rise rapidly in February. However, the recent loosening in supply conditions suggests that runaway house price inflation will not continue for too much longer. … CoreLogic House Prices …
1st April 2014
The housing recovery is at a crossroad. We expect looser supply conditions to drive a moderation in house price gains over the next year. But our forecasts assume that declining investor demand will be replaced by mortgage-dependent buyers. If …
27th March 2014
The rapid, double-digit increases in house prices are unlikely to continue now that housing market supply conditions are loosening. … Case-Shiller Prices & New Home Sales …
25th March 2014
The slight decline in existing home sales in February was the sixth drop in seven months. However, sales of non-distressed existing homes are doing much better. … Existing Home Sales …
20th March 2014
Continued unseasonably severe weather, as well as a shortage of lots, kept housing starts subdued in February. But the size of the shortfall between starts and household formation means that construction won’t stay this low for long. … Housing Starts …
18th March 2014
The biggest risk facing the US housing market is that higher mortgage interest rates and tight credit conditions prevent a recovery in mortgage demand, meaning that mortgage-dependent buyers do not take the place of retreating investors. … What is the …
13th March 2014
New home sales shook off earlier weather effects to post a strong gain in January. Although existing home sales fell again, they should also recover before too long. Nevertheless, the bigger picture is that the recent weakness of housing market demand, …
11th March 2014
The drop in mortgage applications for home purchase in February, which could be related to the introduction of new mortgage lending rules during the previous month, mean that applications are at rock-bottom levels. … Mortgage Applications (Feb. …
5th March 2014
The first CoreLogic house price reading of 2014 suggests that prices started the year on a strong note. But this figure reflects supply and demand conditions from several months ago. The recent weakening in sales activity points to a slowdown in price …
4th March 2014
The strong rise in new home sales in January means that the recovery in housing market activity looks to be back on track. There is considerable scope for new home sales to rise further in 2014. … New Home Sales (Jan …
26th February 2014
House prices rose by a strong 11.4% during 2013 as a whole. However, prices are a lagging indicator of the health of the housing market. The more recent weakness of home sales will weigh on price growth before too long. … Case-Shiller Home Prices …
25th February 2014
