US Housing Market Focus Explaining recent developments in housing equity withdrawal Our estimate of housing equity withdrawal (HEW) shows that, in aggregate, households have yet to return to using their homes as a piggy bank. While the factors holding HEW back are likely to ease the... 26th October 2016 · 1 min read
US Housing Market Focus Why is the inventory of homes for sale so low? The key driver of low levels of existing home inventory looks to be movers deciding to keep hold of their previous home rather than selling it. In turn, that behaviour has been encouraged by ultra-low... 26th August 2016 · 1 min read
US Housing Market Focus Is the rental market losing steam? Despite some signs that the rental market is losing momentum, low rental vacancy rates and the prospect of stronger growth in average hourly earnings mean that investors in residential real estate can... 8th August 2016 · 1 min read
US Housing Market Focus Will single-family housing starts ever recover? In order for housing starts to make sustained headway, building in the single-family sector needs to rise. For that to happen, builders need to shift production towards lower priced starter homes... 6th July 2016 · 1 min read
US Housing Market Focus Existing Home Sales (May) Existing home sales rose by a marginal 1.8% m/m in May, helped by low mortgage rates. But with sales back to their long-run average and the inventory of homes for sale very low, we doubt sales will... 22nd June 2016 · 1 min read
US Housing Market Focus What impact will lower oil prices have on the housing market? Low oil prices will act as a headwind to the housing markets of oil producing states and dent the demand for high-end homes from foreign buyers. But set against that, the money households save on gas... 19th February 2016 · 1 min read
US Housing Market Focus Is the housing market heading for a slowdown or another boom? It is not out of the question that the coming rise in interest rates will derail the housing market recovery. Equally, however, it is plausible that a surge of pent-up demand, combined with low... 30th November 2015 · 1 min read
US Housing Market Focus Will homebuilding ever return to the highs of 2006? We are forecasting housing starts to surge by almost 40% over the next few years, reaching 1.5m by the end of 2017. It’s possible that starts could rise even more rapidly in the short term as builders... 19th June 2015 · 1 min read
US Housing Market Focus Has the mortgage market turned a corner? The weight of evidence suggests that the mortgage market is making a bigger contribution to the housing recovery than some of the most widely watched indicators imply. Combined with the prospect of... 20th April 2015 · 1 min read
US Housing Market Focus CoreLogic House Prices (Oct.) October’s CoreLogic index does not fundamentally alter the picture of moderating house price pressures. And with housing more or less fairly valued, and the cost of borrowing set to rise, a period in... 2nd December 2014 · 1 min read
US Housing Market Focus Will higher interest rates choke off the housing recovery? Housing will be affordable and a touch undervalued even by the end of 2016, despite the prospect of interest rates rising over that period. The upshot is that the recovery in the housing market will... 1st December 2014 · 1 min read
US Housing Market Focus Weighing up the FHFA’s mortgage proposals Proposals to lower the minimum down-payment on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac-backed mortgages at the same time as reducing banks’ exposure to put-back risk may help accelerate the modest loosening in... 31st October 2014 · 1 min read
US Housing Market Focus What next for the US housing market? The US housing market will recover from its current soft patch to post strong gains in home sales and housing starts over the next couple of years. By contrast house price growth will slow, but this... 2nd June 2014 · 1 min read
US Housing Market Focus Shale will drive local housing market outperformance North Dakota owes its position as the strongest performing housing market in the US to the scale of shale oil and gas production in the State. Housing markets in a number of the other States sharing... 28th May 2014 · 1 min read
US Housing Market Focus Is the multi-family sector becoming overbuilt? Multi-family construction activity has bounced back strongly since the crash. But the pipeline of multi-family homes under construction does not look particularly large relative to the stock of... 13th November 2013 · 1 min read
US Housing Market Focus Are higher mortgage rates a bigger threat than we thought? The steady rise in mortgage interest rates has weighed moderately on mortgage applications for home purchase and total home sales. Any fresh increase in mortgage rates would take a similar toll. While... 21st October 2013 · 1 min read
