Builders confident as market primed to expand in 2018
It is the highest report since July 1999
Builder confidence in the market for newly built single-family homes increased five points to a level of 74 in December 2017 on the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) after a downwardly revised November reading. This was the highest report since July 1999.
"Housing market conditions are improving partially because of new policies aimed at providing regulatory relief to the business community," NAHB Chairman Granger MacDonald said.
“The HMI measure of home buyer traffic rose eight points, showing that demand for housing is on the rise," NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz said. "With low unemployment rates, favorable demographics and a tight supply of existing home inventory, we can expect continued upward movement of the single-family construction sector next year.”
Derived from a monthly survey that NAHB has been conducting for 30 years, the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index gauges builder perceptions of current single-family home sales and sales expectations for the next six months as "good," "fair" or "poor." The survey also asks builders to rate traffic of prospective buyers as "high to very high," "average" or "low to very low." Scores for each component are then used to calculate a seasonally adjusted index where any number over 50 indicates that more builders view conditions as good than poor. Visit www.nahb.org/hmi and www.housingeconomics.com for more information.
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