Home Builder Confidence Returns to Positive Territory
Every month, the National Association of Home Builders conducts a survey of new home builders to gauge their confidence in the current real estate market. This month, the outlook was positive for the first time since it crashed early this year. Should this trend continue, it represents good news for mortgage loan brokers throughout the country.
This survey is based on three measures. Firstly, respondents are asked to identify the current market for new home sales and their projections for the next six months as “good”, “fair”, or “poor”. They are then asked to rank their perception of current buyer traffic as “high to very high”, “average”, or “low to very low”. Of these three measures, two showed significant improvement; the index for current sales conditions jumped by four points to 57, and the index for the next six months jumped by six points to 64. Though the index for current buyer traffic remains below the crucial 50 mark, it has still showed improvement in the form of a three point jump to 39.
Improvement was seen across all four regions, with particularly strong gains in the West. The West showed a five point gain to 52, while the South rose two points to 51, the Northeast rose by one point to 35, and the Midwest jumped two points to 48. All in all, it’s an encouraging outlook for the continued recovery of the US housing market.
