Builder confidence in the market for newly-built
\nsingle-family homes increased five points to a level of
\n74 in December on the National Association of Home
\nBuilders\/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) after a
\ndownwardly revised November reading. This was the
\nhighest report since July 1999, over 18 years ago.
\n\u201cHousing market conditions are improving partially
\nbecause of new policies aimed at providing regulatory
\nrelief to the business community,\u201d said NAHB Chairman
\nGranger MacDonald, a home builder and developer from
\nKerrville, Texas. \u201cThe HMI measure of home buyer
\ntraffic rose eight points, showing that demand for
\nhousing is on the rise,\u201d said NAHB Chief Economist
\nRobert Dietz. \u201cWith low unemployment rates, favorable
\ndemographics and a tight supply of existing home
\ninventory, we can expect continu ed upward movement of
\nthe single-family construction sector next year.\u201d
\nDerived from a monthly survey that NAHB has been
\nconducting for 30 years, the NAHB\/Wells Fargo Housing
\nMarket Index gauges builder perceptions of current
\nsingle-family home sales and sales expectations for the
\nnext six months as \u201cgood,\u201d \u201cfair\u201d or \u201cpoor.\u201d The survey
\nalso asks builders to rate traffic of prospective
\nbuyers as \u201chigh to very high,\u201d \u201caverage\u201d or \u201clow to
\nvery low.\u201d Scores for each component are then used to
\ncalculate a seasonally adjusted index where any number
\nover 50 indicates that more builders view conditions as
\ngood than poor. All three HMI components registered
\ngains in December. The component measuring buyer
\ntraffic jumped eight points to 58, the index gauging
\ncurrent sales conditions rose four points to 81 and the
\nindex charting s ales expectations in the next six
\nmonths increased three points to 79. Looking at the
\nthree-month moving averages for regional HMI scores,
\nthe Midwest climbed six points to 69, the South rose
\nthree points to 72, the West increased two points to 79
\nand Northeast inched up a single point to 54.<\/p>\n
Wall Street poised for record on tax bill hopes
\nWall Street\u2019s main indexes hit new highs on Monday as
\nthe long-awaited tax overhaul plan looked set for
\nlegislation and buoyed by a flurry of year-end
\ncorporate dealmaking that has topped $11 billion so
\nfar. More US Republicans Senators on Sunday threw their
\nweight behind the tax bill they expect Congress to pass
\nthis week. A Senate vote is set for Tuesday and
\nPresident Donald Trump is expected to sign the bill
\ninto law by the end of the week.US stocks have enjoyed
\na near year-long rally, of late powered by increasing
\nexpectations of the promised tax overhaul, which aims
\nto lower corporate taxes to 21% from 35%, coming to
\nfruition. The benchmark S&P 500 has gained 19.5% so far
\nin 2017, set for its best year since 2013, as investors
\nbet that lower taxes could boost corporate profits and
\ntrigger share buybacks and higher dividend payouts.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe market is going to continue its rally based on the
\nbelief that we\u2019re going to see the Congress pass tax
\nreform,\u201d said Robert Pavlik, Chief Investment
\nStrategist at SlateStone Wealth in New York. \u201cPeople
\nare a bit weary about how long the rally will last, but
\nearnings continue to grow, (the) tax package should
\nhelp and the economy is doing well,\u201d Pavlik said. \u201cI\u2018m
\nvery positive about the overall market. Lower corporate
\ntaxes could also trigger cash repatriation, which
\nmarket analysts say could be used for merger and
\nacquisitions. On Monday, investors were treated to a
\nflood of deals.<\/p>\n
Since the US began recovering from the home-price bust
\nin 2006, economists have used the peak-to-current
\nchange in prices as a measure of recovery in markets.
\nHowever, the peak-to-current change hyper-focuses on
\neconomic losses for those who bought at the peak. What
\nabout consumers who bought homes while prices were at
\nthe bottom of the cycle? If someone was lucky enough to
\nbuy as a market hit bottom and began to recover, they
\nhave seen large home-price gains. Our view of home
\nprice changes shows the peak-to-trough and
\npeak-to-current changes in the CoreLogic Home Price
\nIndex (HPI) for the US, the four states with the
\nlargest peak-to-current declines, and the four states
\nwith the largest peak-to-current gains. In the states
\nwhere the HPI has passed the pre-crisis peak, the peak
\nused to calculate the numbers in Figure 1 is the
\npre-crisis peak. The U S HPI peaked in 2006, and
\nreturned to the 2006 peak in September 2017. Nevada
\nhas the largest peak-to-current decline of any state,
\nand had the largest peak-to-trough decrease at 60%. On
\nthe other end, North Dakota had a shallow
\npeak-to-trough decline, and has risen 47% above the
\nprior peak seen in 2008. A different view of the HPI
\nillustrates the depths of the most notable state-level
\nprice declines and the subsequent upward trajectory in
\nthose states, including the peak-to-trough and
\ntrough-to-current HPI changes for the US and the seven
\nstates that had larger peak-to-trough declines than the
\nUS For the nation, from the 2006 peak to the 2011
\ntrough, the loss was 33%, but from the 2011 trough to
\nSeptember 2017 the gain was 50%. The most extreme drop
\nin the HPI was in Nevada, but prices in that state have
\ngained 89% since hitting bottom in 2012. For reference,
\nwe can compare the gains in the HPI to gains in the
\nstock market. The S&P 500 fell 51% from peak to trough,
\nbut has gained 229% from the trough through September
\n2017. The large price gains since the home-price bottom
\ntranslate into large amounts of home equity gained by
\nhomeowners, improving their balance sheets. As shown in
\nthe CoreLogic Homeowner Equity Report, in the 12 months
\nending in September 2017, the average homeowner gained
\nnearly $15,000 in equity. Only seven states had equity
\ngains over the past year, but California and Nevada
\nstand out with the largest gains at $37,000 and
\n$23,000, respectively.<\/p>\n
Average US gas price drops 3 cents to $2.51 for regular
\nThe average price of a gallon of regular-grade gasoline
\ndropped 3 cents nationally over the past two weeks to
\n$2.51. Industry analyst Trilby Lundberg of the Lundberg
\nSurvey said Sunday that further declines are likely
\nbecause US gas supplies are flush. The current gas
\nprice is 25 cents above where it was a year ago. Gas in
\nSan Francisco was the highest in the contiguous United
\nStates at an average of $3.22 a gallon. The lowest was
\nin Jackson, Mississippi, at $2.14 a gallon. The US
\naverage diesel price is $2.88, holding steady from two
\nweeks ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
NAHB – builders confident as market primed to expand in 2018 Builder confidence in the market for newly-built single-family homes increased five points to a level of 74 in December on the National Association of Home Builders\/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) after a downwardly revised November reading. This was the highest report since July […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[39],"tags":[69,220,163,40,207],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/team.simplyfreedom.ws\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/team.simplyfreedom.ws\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/team.simplyfreedom.ws\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/team.simplyfreedom.ws\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/team.simplyfreedom.ws\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=843"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/team.simplyfreedom.ws\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":844,"href":"http:\/\/team.simplyfreedom.ws\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/843\/revisions\/844"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/team.simplyfreedom.ws\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=843"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/team.simplyfreedom.ws\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=843"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/team.simplyfreedom.ws\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=843"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}