Housing Tides Index™ March 2017 - Market Health Increases in 33 of the Top 41 Local U.S. Markets
Denver, Colorado (PRWEB) March 10, 2017 -- This week marks the release of the March Housing Tides Report™, featuring an update to the Housing Tides Index™, an objective and sophisticated approach to quantifying and comparing the health of U.S. housing markets. The U.S. housing market remains in healthy territory as purchase and rental affordability improve marginally despite a drop in the number of homes for sale.
Understanding the health of a housing market and its relationship to other top markets requires an aggregated, comprehensive view of the industry. The Housing Tides Index provides a succinct monthly measure of market health across the top 41 U.S. markets. Referencing 18 market indicators ranging from unemployment rates and housing permits to rental vacancy and mortgage foreclosure rates, the Tides Index helps users understand exposure at a deeper level than is currently possible.
National Housing Tides Index Summary – March 2017
- The Housing Tides Index increased from 72.4 in February to 73.6 in March as the U.S. housing and homebuilding industry resumed its strengthening trend. The Index scores increased in 33 of the top 41 local markets this month.
- The construction unemployment rate increased from 5.7% in November to 7.4% in December. While this is higher than our designated “healthy” range, readers should remember that unemployment rates vary seasonally and homebuilders have often pointed to labor scarcity as an obstacle to increasing construction volume.
- Housing supply improved markedly, rising from 2.9 months of supply in November to 3.9 in December. However, it’s important to note that this supply increase is due to a large decrease in home sales while for-sale inventory simultaneously fell to its lowest level since December 2013.
- Also contributing to the increase in the Housing Tides Index, U.S. rent prices reversed course and fell in December. The median asking rent for two-bedroom units decreased from $1,630 in November to $1,500 in January.
- Mortgage foreclosure rates continued to decline in December, with latest data showing that just 0.9% of all homes with a mortgage are in foreclosure. The mortgage foreclosure rate is down from 1.37% in December 2015.
Highlighting the Ten Healthiest U.S. Housing Markets - March, 2017 - Please reference the attached graph to view the ten healthiest U.S. Housing Markets.
Click here to view the complete Housing Tides Index of the top 41 U.S. markets.
Media Exclusive! Housing Tides Monthly Pulse
An email service exclusively created for media that delivers an updated infographic depicting the latest monthly Housing Tides Index, the complete Index as it appears in the Housing Tides Report™, and a brief executive summary. All content can be shared in print and digital publications, with attribution to the Housing Tides Report.
Members of the media can subscribe to the Housing Tides Monthly Pulse here.
About Housing Tides
Housing Tides™ (“Tides”) is the only monthly report that provides a comprehensive measure and aggregated understanding of the health of the U.S. housing and home building industry. Designed to take the guesswork out of the vast amount of forecasting information published about this sector, Tides is a sophisticated report that delivers city-specific, updated information when market conditions change. It is the only report that uses natural language processing and machine learning to correctly understand and synthesize large volumes of data, making it more comprehensive, balanced, and reliable than any other report of its kind. More information is available at http://www.housingtides.com.
Housing Tides is proudly partnered with IBM Watson®.
Hannah Finch, EnergyLogic, Inc., http://nrglogic.com/, +1 (970) 797-3283, [email protected]
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