First Quarter 2012 Housing Market Conditions

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June 13, 2012

First Quarter 2012 Housing Market Conditions

HUD’s Office of Policy Development and Research has released the U.S. Housing Market Conditions Report for the first quarter of 2012. The report contains updates on production, marketing, multifamily housing performance, homeownership, and affordability statistics. It includes comparisons with the previous quarter and the first quarter of 2011, profiles of economic and housing market activity in each of HUD’s 10 regions, and updates of historical trends in national and regional housing markets. The title of the issue’s feature article is “HUD Reports Find Large, Unexplained Variations in Title and Settlement Costs.”

Single and multifamily building permits increased by 7% and 12% respectively, from the previous quarter. Permits increased significantly compared with the prior year, with single-family permits rising by 17 percent and multifamily permits rising by 61 percent.

Single-family construction starts grew slightly from the previous quarter and increased by 15% over the year. Multifamily starts were 5% higher compared with the previous quarter and 27% higher over the year. New housing completions decreased by 2% from the previous quarter and remained the same compared with a year earlier.

New single-family home sales increased by 4% from the previous quarter and by 13% from a year earlier. Existing home sales were 5% higher than the previous quarter and increased by 4% from a year earlier.

Home affordability increased 14.2 percentage points from the previous quarter. This increase is attributed to a 3.6% decrease in the median sales price of existing single-family homes, a decline in mortgage interest rates, and a small increase in median family income

Newly initiated foreclosures were down to 0.99% in the fourth quarter of 2011, down from 1.08% in the previous quarter and 1.27% a year earlier.