Economy Outlook Weakens, Housing Indicators Improve
We’re past the halfway point in 2015, and the news is not good. According to Fannie Mae’s economic team, the outlook for the economy is less robust than had been anticipated earlier in the year. This is as a result of the second quarter economic growth reports, which came in lower than expected. Even factoring in the revised, improved growth reports of the first quarter of the year, the full-year outlook for 2015 remains at an improvement of 2.1%.
Currently, we are looking to the housing market to be a bigger contributor to growth for the rest of the year. Though activity was mixed throughout June, the first half of 2015 showed improvement over the same period in 2014. Existing home sales in June were at their strongest pace since February of 2007, and marketing time is shorter than it has been in the past four years. Throughout 2015 so far, we have seen a year-to-date improvement over 2014 of 7.7% in existing home sales, 20.3% in new home sales, 9.1% in single-family housing starts, and 14.4% in multifamily housing starts.
