Home Builders Have A Positive Outlook For The Future
In August, 2012, home builders, in the United States, had a more positive outlook than at any time during the past five years. The National Association of Home Builders has taken the position the housing industry is turning a corner. Although sentiment among homebuilders is higher than it has been for a long time, the overall market conditions in the building of new single family homes is still poor.
Barry Rutenberg, from the National Association of Home builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index, stated “while there is still much room for improvement, we have come a long way from the depths of the recession and the outlook appears to be brightening.” Home builders expect sales of single family homes to increase for the next six months.
New Home Sales Are Higher
Sales of new homes are being made at a higher rate in 2012 than they were in 2011. It should be noted 2011 home sales were at the lowest level in half a century. Mortgage rates also are still near record lows. This has been a motivating factor for prospective purchasers with the ability to obtain low cost mortgages. Can the optimism among home builders be indicative the economy in the United States is recovering? This is still questionable. For the economy to recover, the employment rate must be higher than the 8.1% rate that exists today.
It should also be pointed out the economy in Europe is also weak and this will impact on the economy in the United States.
Has The Housing Market Bottomed Out?
In recent weeks there have been numerous articles discussing the bottoming out of the housing market. Recently, a real estate monitoring company’s chief economist issued a statement claiming the decrease in values for single family homes in the United States had bottomed out. And the economist stated “the housing recovery is holding together despite lower than expected job growth due to organic strength of its own.”
New Home Sales And Unemployment
Each time a new home is built in the United States, it has the impact of creating three jobs and generating $90,000 of new tax revenue. This has an overall affirmative impact on the local economy.