Builder Confidence Remains Unchanged

Washington, DC, May 16, 2011--Builder confidence in the market for newly built, single-family homes was unchanged at the low level of 16 in May, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index. For six out of the last seven months, the index has remained unchanged.

“Builder confidence has hardly budged over the past six months as persistent concerns regarding competition from distressed property sales, lack of production credit, inaccurate appraisals, and proposals to reduce government support of housing have continued to cloud the outlook,” said NAHB Chairman Bob Nielsen. “In addition, many builders in this month’s survey cited high gas prices as a further contributor to consumer anxiety and reluctance to go forward with a home purchase.”

The NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index gauges builder perceptions of current single-family home sales and sales expectations for the next six months as “good,” “fair” or “poor”; the information is derived from a monthly survey that NAHB has been conducting for more than 20 years. The survey also asks builders to rate traffic of prospective buyers as “high to very high,” “average” or “low to very low.” Scores from each component are then used to calculate a seasonally adjusted index where any number over 50 indicates that more builders view sales conditions as good than poor.

Both the index gauging current sales conditions and the index gauging traffic of prospective buyers inched up one point in May, to 16 and 14, respectively. While still very low, the traffic gauge is now at its highest point since May of 2010. Meanwhile, the index gauging sales expectations in the next six months declined two points to 20 in May.

HMI results were mixed regionally, with the Northeast posting a 5-point decline to 15, the Midwest posting no change at 14, the South posting a one-point gain to 16, and the West posting a two-point decline to 16.