So You'd Like to Buy a New, Single-Family Home? You May Be in Luck

So You’d Like to Buy a New, Single-Family Home?

Are you dreaming of a new home for the New Year? According to this recent Realtor.com article by Clare Trappaso, right now may be a great time to buy a single-family home, as builders plan to add more homes to the market. Not only does this rise in single-family home permits bode well for homebuilding’s continued strength, but also greater choice and selection for home shoppers.

Those frustrated by the lack of single-family houses on the market may soon get a little relief: Builders are planning to put up more new homes in the coming months. Finally.

Builders secured 5.9% more permits, a strong indicator of the number of new homes to come, in October than in September, according to the seasonally adjusted numbers in the latest residential sales report jointly released by the U.S. Census Bureau and U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Permits for all housing types were also up 0.9% year over year.

(The numbers have been smoothed out over a year to account for seasonal fluctuations in the market.)

Permits for the classic single-family home—those iconic, detached houses that typically come with yards out back—also received a jolt. They rose 1.9% from September and were up 7.7% from October 2016.

“We continue to see single-family homebuilding recover,” says Chief Economist Danielle Hale of realtor.com®. “That’s great news for home buyers. They need more options in the market, and this will help.”

However, permits plummeted sharply in the Northeast, falling 26.8% month over month, following a high in September, and 11.9% year over year. In the Midwest, they also dipped 4.1% from September, but were up annually by 3.5%. Permits for single-family homes were up, though, in the South and the West.

Housing starts, which is construction on homes that has started but isn’t completed yet, were also up. For every kind of home (including rentals and condos), they rose 13.7% from September. For single-family houses, it increased 5.3%. Annually, overall starts were down 2.9%, but were up 0.7% for single-family homes.

“The level of single-family homebuilding is almost exactly what we saw 10 years ago,” says Hale. “It is a bit of a milestone to get back to that level, [but] there’s still more room for improvement.”

Read the full article: So You’d Like to Buy a New, Single-Family Home? You May Be in Luck

Anna Young