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NAHB: Single-family housing to "rev up" in 2015

Predicts housing starts will grow 26 percent next year.


A growing economy, rising household formations, low mortgage rates and pent-up demand will help single-family housing production to rev up in 2015 while a growth in renters will keep the multifamily market at cruising altitude or higher, according to economists who participated in the recent National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) 2014 Fall Construction Forecast Webinar.

“Single-family builders are feeling good. They are not overly confident, but confident enough to keep moving forward,” said NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe. He added that the single-family sector will finish out the year much stronger than it began and set the stage for a robust 2015.

“This is mostly due to significant pent-up demand and steady job and economic growth that will allow trade-up buyers who have delayed home purchases due to job insecurity to enter the marketplace,” said Crowe.

NAHB is forecasting 991,000 total housing starts in 2014, up 6.6 percent from 930,000 units last year. Single-family production is expected to rise 2.5 percent this year to 637,000 units, increase an additional 26 percent next year to 802,000 and reach 1.1 million in 2016.

Setting the 2000-2003 period as a benchmark for normal housing activity when single-family production averaged 1.3 million units annually, single-family starts are expected to steadily rise from 48 percent of what is considered a typical market in the third quarter of 2014 to 90 percent of normal by the fourth quarter of 2016.

Multifamily starts, which Crowe said are now at a normal level of production, are projected to increase 15 percent in 2014 to 356,000 units and hold steady next year.

Taking an even more bullish outlook, Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said that prospects are good for continued gains in overall economic and housing activity.

“The reason is that job growth is quite strong,” said Zandi. “Currently, we are creating about 225,000 jobs per month, or 2.75 million per year. That is double the pace necessary to reduce unemployment and under employment, which augers very, very well for housing demand and the housing market more broadly.

“In a normal year, there should be demand for 1.7 million units,” he said, adding that each single-family home generates about 3.5 jobs over the course of a year and every multifamily unit produces 1.5 jobs over the same period.

Zandi said that increasing the housing stock by 700,000 units to meet this unmet demand would create 2.1 million jobs, which “would reduce unemployment by 1.5 percentage points.”

Delving beneath the national numbers, Robert Denk, NAHB’s assistant vice president for forecasting and analysis, noted the housing recovery will vary by state and region.

“We are getting back to the point where economic conditions are dictating the strength of local housing markets,” said Denk. “It is very clear that those states with higher levels of payroll employment or labor market recovery are associated with healthier housing markets.”

Click here for the association's full press release.

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