Momentum Among Builders?
The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index for July, released just this week, saw a pretty significant jump—the largest jump in builder confidence in nearly a decade. Up six points, builder confidence for the newly-built, single-family housing market reached 35 points in July—the highest point since March of 2007.
While this is a step in the right direction, certainly, we’re still far below that coveted 50 point mark—the point at which more builders consider the situation positive than negative. Barry Rutenberg, a Florida builder and NAHB chairman, says this uptick is due to “current sales conditions, prospects for future sales and traffic of prospective buyers.”
We’ve asked before, and we’ll ask again… are prospects looking up in the new construction market? Are those of you who target this market feeling the positive energy among builders that is reflected in the HMI number? Please send an email or post a comment to share your thoughts.
Survey Results as of 07/20/2012:
NAHB's builder confidence index is:
Too optimistic. |
| 69% | ||
Reflective of what we're seeing in the market. |
| 30% | ||
Too pessimistic. |
| 1% |
Despite signs of improvement in housing, window and door executives remain cautious, our poll results suggest. This week, 69 percent of respondents think that builders are overly optimistic about the current state of the economy, and 30 percent of voters say that the uptick in builder confidence is reflective of what they're experiencing in the market. While it's difficult to go against the grain of the majority, I would just take a moment to point out that the builder confidence index is forward looking--the increase in the number basically notes that builders feel better about tomorrow than they do about yesterday or today. And regardless of how business is going today, I think it's a good sign when we can look forward to tomorrow with a more positive outlook.
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Contact Christina Lewellen, senior editor, at clewellen@glass.org.
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