Housing starts and home sales highlights
A busy week for housing and construction data is represented on the Quikrete Industry Dashboad in the form of ascending single-family housing starts, and descending existing home sales.
Total existing-home sales declined 2.4% in March to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.44 million. Year-over-year, existing home sales are down 22%, according to the National Association of Realtors.
“Home sales are trying to recover and are highly sensitive to changes in mortgage rates,” said NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun. “Yet, at the same time, multiple offers on starter homes are quite common, implying more supply is needed to fully satisfy demand. It’s a unique housing market.”
Meanwhile, total housing starts were down 0.8 percent from down 0.8 percent from the downwardly revised February figure of 1,432,000 (SAAR).
A relative bright spot on the report from the U.S. Census Bureau: single-family starts were up 2.7 percent to a rate 861,000.
NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz expects “choppiness” ahead, “with the 2023 data posting significant year-over-year weakness before improving on a sustained basis,” he said. “The multifamily market softened in March, and we anticipate ongoing declines for apartment construction in the months ahead due to tighter lending conditions in the commercial real estate sector.”
Gas prices, as measured by the American Automobile Association rose 3 cents over the week, and now the national average for a gallon of regular gas is $3.69. That’s up from last month, but down from a year ago ($4.11).
And on Wall Street, all 10 ticker symbols tracked on the HBSDealer Stock Roundup are ahead for the month. Four are ahead for the year.
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Coming next: The Conference Board, the New York-based business think tank, will release the closely watched Consumer Confidence Index on April 25. Last month’s index was 104.2 (1980=100).
