Construction Spending

June 1, 2023 Construction spending (the green bars above) rose 1.2% in April after climbing 0.3% in March and jumping 2.4% in March.   In the past 12 months it has risen 7.2%.  As indicated  below, spending on the construction of single-family housing has declined...

Case Shiller Index of Home Prices

May 30, 2023 The Case Shiller Index of Home Prices in 20 cities rose 1.5% in March after rising 0.3% in February.  These are the first two increases in this series since June of last year.  After a long period of rising rapidly, prices began to fall late last year but...

New Home Sales

May 23, 2023 New home sales rose 4.1% in April to 683 thousand after rising 4.0% in March.   The combined impact of a sharp rise in mortgage rates and rapid price appreciation triggered the sharp drop in home sales throughout 2022.  However with mortgage rates having...

Existing Home Sales

May 18, 2023 . Existing home sales fell 3.4% in April to 4,280 thousand aftering declining 2.6% in March. Home sales have begun to turn upwards after having declined for twelve consecutive months. Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist said that, “Home sales are...

Homeownership Rates

May 17, 2023 Home ownership rose 0.1% in the first quarter to 66.0 after having declined 0.1% in the fourth quarter.  Homeownership had been rising gradually for several years before the pandemic hit.  It jumped 2.6% in the second quarter of 2020 to 67.9, but has...

Mortgage Loans

May 17, 2023 Real estate loans rose at a 1.7% annual rate in April after climbing at a 3.7% pace in March and 8.9% in February.  The year over year growwth rate is 10.1%.  Thus, real estate loans had been growing at a solid double-digit pace through February, but they...