Rising mortgage rates approaching 7% along with declining builder sentiment stemming from stubbornly high construction costs and weakening consumer demand pushed new-home sales down at a double-digit rate in September. Following a brief uptick in August, sales of newly built, single-family homes in September fell 10.9% to a 603,000 seasonally adjusted annual rate, according to newly released data by the…
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New Home Sales Up but Rising Rates Portend Weakening Market
A brief decline in mortgage rates helped to boost new home sales in August but sales are expected to move on a downward trend in the months ahead as rates have since moved higher and builder sentiment continues to fall due to declining housing affordability and ongoing supply chain bottlenecks. Sales of newly built, single-family homes in August increased 28.8%…
Read MoreSingle-Family Housing Starts Decline, Permits Increase
The single-family housing market continued to show signs of slowing in April as rising mortgage rates and ongoing supply chain disruptions continue to raise housing costs and take a toll on the housing market. Due to a surge in multifamily production, overall housing starts held fairly steady, falling just 0.2% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.72 million units,…
Read MoreIs The New Home Market Cooling?
I wrote recently about how the housing market continues to show strength, driven in part by buoyant builder sentiment, low inventories and high demand across all price points. That was back in the fall, and while all signs point to strong new home demand through this spring and summer, a new confluence of pressures could force a tamping down of…
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