In February 2019, the housing market continued to underperform its potential, but showed signs of promise leading into the spring home-buying season. Actual existing-home sales are 2.5 percent below the market’s potential, according to our Potential Home Sales model. That means the market has the potential to support 127,000 more home sales at a ... Read More ›

First American’s most recent Potential Home Sales model for January 2019 found a 5.7 percent decline in the market potential for existing home sales, compared to the previous year. Increasing tenure length (the length of time a homeowner stays in their home before moving) was the most prominent factor leading to this decline. Read More ›

Last week, the Census Bureau released its Residential Construction report for December. Housing completions decreased 8.4 percent compared with last December and continued to fall short of the number of new housing units necessary to keep pace with household formation. Housing starts also decreased 10.9 percent in December compared with a year ... Read More ›

In the first month of the new year, the housing market continued to underperform its potential, but gave us signs of promise for the future. Actual existing-home sales are 5.3 percent below the market’s potential, according to our Potential Home Sales model. That means the market has the potential to support 293,000 more home sales than the ... Read More ›

Contrary to many reports, student loan debt is not an insurmountable barrier to homeownership for millennials. Student loan debt is more likely to delay the timing of homeownership, but it does not necessarily prevent homeownership. But, this begs the questions, how does student loan debt impact house-buying power? And, is higher education a ... Read More ›

In December, the market potential for existing-home sales in December increased 1.1 percent to a seasonally adjusted annualized rate of 6.15 million compared with a year ago, but the housing market still underperformed its potential by 9.6 percent, according to our Potential Homes Sales Model. Month over month, the gap between actual existing-home ... Read More ›