CategoriesNews

Housing Market Inventory Is Starting To Recover

Housing starts jumped in March, recovering from a bleak February that included wild winter storms in the South, according to a recent report from the Census Bureau. Single-family housing starts rose 15.3% over the month to a pace of 1.24 million annualized units. That’s up 37% from a year ago, but it’s important to take into account that the COVID-19 virus first took hold of the housing market in March 2020, said Doug Duncan, chief economist at Fannie Mae.

“The March pace was the second strongest since 2006, surpassed only by this past December’s reading,” Duncan said. “An extremely tight supply of existing homes for sale combined with still-favorable mortgage rates and an improving labor market will continue to support demand for new housing. Suburban multifamily housing construction is also benefiting from this trend.”

For now, Duncan said, the supply of existing homes for sale and an elevated level of new homes sold — but not yet constructed — should help bolster a strong construction pace of new housing starts moving into the spring buying season.

“While housing demand is expected to remain strong, we expect it to diminish somewhat as the year progresses due to the waning effect of the COVID-19 disruption to homebuyers’ purchasing timelines,” Duncan said.

Single-family housing starts ended 2020 on a high note, reaching a 1.338 million-unit pace in December — the highest pace since 2006. While the pace has certainly dropped since then, there are signs that builders could have some work in the pipelines.

A positive indicator for the housing market is the overall number of permits issued for single-family homes, which increased 4.6% from February. That number is a good indicator of future construction, according to First American Deputy Chief Economist Odeta Kushi.

“Builders are facing surging demand in an environment of limited existing homes available for sale,” Kushi said. “Yet they face challenges, including limited building materials, rising lumbers costs, a dearth of buildable lots, and costly regulations. These headwinds could slow the momentum.”

A recent report showed the current price of lumber and building materials is adding approximately $24,000 to the cost of new builds, forcing prospective homebuyers to abandon new builds and focus on existing properties. That’s depleting inventory across the country.

“There continues to be a demographic-fueled shift away from renting to home-owning driven by millennials aging into homeownership, but the challenge is the historic lack of supply,” Kushi said.

Added Matthew Speakman, Zillow chief economist: “There is no avoiding the fact that prices of key materials are rising at their fastest rates in decades, and availability is often limited due to pandemic-driven supply chain disruptions. The question now is whether this enduring optimism can continue to translate into activity, and if a continuation of these conditions will eventually force builders to throttle back.”

Privately-owned housing starts in March were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1,739,000, up 19.4%

from February’s estimate of 1,457,000.

Single-family housing completions in March were at a rate of 1,099,000, up 5.3% from February’s rate of 1,044,000. Single-family authorizations in March were at a rate of 1,199,000, up 4.6% from February’s rate of 1,146,000.

“In nearly every market, 20% more inventory means 20% more home sales,” said Lawrence Yun, chief economist for the National Association of Realtors. “Today’s news on the new home construction surge is, therefore, highly welcomed, especially in light of major challenges on material costs and soaring lumber prices.”

Origination: https://www.housingwire.com/articles/housing-inventory-is-starting-to-recover/ 

CategoriesEconomy, News, Real Estate

States Struggle To Give Out Over $45 Billion In Rental Assistance As Evictions Continue

Since Matthew Turner was laid off in October, he estimates he’s applied to close to 600 jobs, with no luck.

Nearly as difficult has been his hunt for rental assistance.

Turner’s contacted many local organizations in North Carolina where he lives, but has been denied or left on waitlists by all of them. He and his husband, Gerard, have depleted their savings and don’t know how they’re going to come up with May’s rent for their Raleigh apartment.

“It’s incredibly stressful,” Turner, 48, said. “You don’t know what else to do.”

Congress has allocated a total of more than $45 billion in rental assistance after the coronavirus pandemic cost millions of Americans their jobs and left as many as 1 in 5 renters unable to keep up with their housing payments, including close to a third of African American renters.

However, the rollout of the relief funds isn’t coming fast enough for many, and evictions continue despite a national ban on the proceedings.

So far, states and their local programs are in the process of distributing $16 billion of the $25 billion in rental assistance passed in December, according to the National Low Income Housing Coalition.

In May, the Department of the Treasury will begin sending to states and localities the additional $21 billion in rental assistance allocated in March’s stimulus package.

As of early April, three months after the $25 billion in relief was passed, some 20 states have yet to open a program to give out the aid.

That has left tenants across the country stuck in line for the assistance.

“Wait times for rent relief in Massachusetts are still weeks to months,” said Helen Matthews, communications manager at City Life/Vida Urbana, a nonprofit in Boston.

The delays are due to the fact that states are figuring out how to distribute an unprecedented amount of money, experts say. In addition, housing advocates say that some states are unnecessarily slowing things by imposing arduous documentation requirements for tenants to qualify.

Another issue is that state programs have the option of giving the money directly to a renter if their landlord refuses to participate, but most aren’t doing so, said Diane Yentel, president and CEO of the National Low Income Housing Coalition. (Some landlords don’t want to agree to certain terms of accepting the assistance, which can include not raising rent or evicting their tenant for a period of time.)

Although the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has banned most evictions through the end of June, many landlords are pushing out tenants anyway.

Since the CDC ban went into effect in September, The Eviction Lab at Princeton University has identified more than 217,000 evictions in just the five states and 19 cities that it tracks. Some federal judges have questioned the CDC’s authority to ban evictions, and an advisory body to the Texas courts this month issued guidance saying judges didn’t need to enforce the moratorium.

Unable to rely on the eviction ban for protection, struggling renters in Texas have also not had much luck getting rental assistance.

A report published this month on Texas’ rent relief program found that out of more than 176,000 people who’ve begun applying for financial assistance there, only 250 applications have been approved with payments sent out.

“If it takes you 45 days to get money, and 44 days to get evicted, what was the point of the money?” said Mark A. Melton, a lawyer who has been representing tenants pro bono during the pandemic.

“It’s like drowning in the ocean and being 12 inches away from a lifeline, but no one is helping to push it your way.”

Origination: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/04/16/states-struggle-to-give-out-billions-in-rental-assistance-as-evictions-continue-.html