In Depth Analysis: CalculatedRisk Newsletter on Real Estate (Ad Free) Read it here.

Monday, November 19, 2012

Early: Housing Forecasts for 2013

by Calculated Risk on 11/19/2012 04:49:00 PM

Towards the end of each year I start to collect some housing forecasts for the following year. Here was a summary of forecasts for 2012. Right now it looks like new home sales will be around 365 thousand this year, and total starts around 750 thousand or so.

From Hui Shan, Sven Jari Stehn, Jan Hatzius at Goldman Sachs:

We project housing starts to continue to rise, reaching an annual rate of 1.0 million by the end of 2013 and 1.5 million by the end of 2016.
Fannie Mae Chief Economist Doug Duncan is forecasting an 18.4% increase in housing starts in 2013 to 888 thousand, and single family starts increasing to 611 thousand.

Duncan projects new single family home sales to increase to 433 thousand from around 368 thousand this year. Duncan projects existing home sales will increase slightly to 4.76 million next year.

I'll be adding more forecasts, but I think we will see another solid percentage increase for housing starts and new home sales next year.