Poll question: Your 2023 starts forecast
December is forecast season—a month to look ahead, hopefully and realistically.
A good place to start is starts. This week’s HBSDealer.com poll question attempts to gain readers’ thoughts and insights on next year’s total number of new privately-owned housing units started, a metric better-known as “total starts.”
Since 2011, total housing starts have risen steadily, from 608,800 in 2011 to the 2021 total of 1,601,000.
So far this year, after 10 months of data from the U.S. Census Bureau, there have been 1,348,000 total housing starts, a figure that is just slightly ahead of the first 10 months of 2021 (1,346,100).
A recent forecast from the National Association of Homebuilders (see: A residential construction outlook for 2023 and beyond) suggests a big housing starts decline decline in 2023.
As previously reported, The association’s Chief Economist Robert Dietz said 2022 will see an overall decline in housing starts, followed by a double-digit decline in 2023 before the market begins to stabilize in 2024.
Dietz added that 17% to 25% of the U.S. economy is driven by housing and its offshoots, such as furniture. The recent post-pandemic housing growth the nation has witnessed was “not sustainable,” he said, noting that GDP has declined in four of the past six quarters.
HBSDealer encourages letters to the editor. Please send us your additional thoughts on the 2023 business environment as you expect it to play out. Send comments to [email protected].