According to all of the statistics from many corners: housing
research firms such as Zelman Associates, investors in the stock market,
the National Association of Realtors, and the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB),
involvement in the new home market is beneficial on many different
levels. Investors are significantly pleased with the robust returns of
national publicly held home builders such as Meritage Homes Corp., Toll
Brothers Inc., Taylor Morrison Home Corp. and Standard Pacific Corp.
The U.S. Home Construction Index of the Dow Jones
has
seen a 10.8% gain excluding dividends for its investors. Toll Brothers
Inc. celebrates a 13% increase in orders year-over-year compared to
2014 as well.
Builders are reporting the sales of new homes have gotten off to a
tremendous start in January and February of 2015. The NAHB is also in
line with this assumption, so the only downward impactful news out of
all of this is that the sale of existing homes is faltering. However,
for once, there is good news associated with this negative trend.
Because of the real estate market recovery after the Recession, the
inventory of homes that are on the market to be sold that can
immediately be bought is 4.7 months. This means that it would take only
4.7 months to buy every home that is currently for sale in the United
States. During the Recession, the inventory of homes reached almost 2
years, so this low amount of inventory is an indicator that the housing
recovery has truly taken a positive turn. However, during a healthy
housing market, the inventory normally stands around 6 months. So,
existing home sales have slowed to their slowest pace in 9 months
because of this and other factors.
Last year, both builders and Realtors alike suffered through the
numerous and overwhelming polar fronts that came sweeping down from not
just Canada but the Arctic itself. These weather patterns last year
literally had the housing market at a standstill during the 1st quarter
of 2014. While not as bad this year, the weather has affected people’s
home shopping habits and kept them indoors. Also, January and February
are not normally booming months for real estate sales, so it’s
definitely not time to panic and start liquidating all of the assets
just yet!
While
the two factors above may be slowing down existing home sales, overall,
home sales are set to increase during the spring which is typically the
“busy season” for real estate because of three factors: the economy
(GDP), job growth, and interest rates. The GDP has been increasing each
quarter for the past 1.5 years. However slight, these increases seem
to be “piling up” so that even some economists are surprised by the
growth each quarter of the GDP. Unemployment has been dropping for many
months in a row and showing a consistent increase in available jobs
each quarter as well. The job market is getting so robust that people
that had been on long term unemployment are once again entering the job
market. Finally interest rates for mortgages are still unbeatable at
lower than 4%. They do climb over 4% every couple of weeks, but even at
those rates, they are still lower than an average interest rate in a
“normal market” of 5.5% to 7%.
Investors, builders, researchers, and economists are sure to have
their eye on the real estate market for both new homes and existing
homes moving into the spring quarter (and hopefully the busiest
quarter), so they will be able to predict if this sales phenomena is
merely a lull or an actual trend. In the mean time, new homes are for
sale throughout the United States, and at the moment, buyers are
interested in purchasing them.
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