MBANow: Lynn Fisher on Builder Applications Survey Trends

The Mortgage Bankers Association released a new MBANow video featuring MBA Vice President of Research and Economics Lynn Fisher, who discusses recent trends in the new home purchase market.  

The video can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6dosKQ69mK0&feature=em-uploademail.    

The latest MBA Builder Applications Surveys have showed since August, home building has ticked up slightly following a slow summer. “This time of the year we normally seasonally see applications for new homes fall off a little bit, but by looking at Census data we sense that things have fallen off a bit more than normal, partly because the home building industry is pretty much at capacity.”  

Fisher noted August home building was hampered by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, which affected Texas and Florida, respectively, two of the largest home building states.  

“Florida and Texas represent one-third of all the applications we saw for new homes, so we could some impact,” Fisher said. “Obviously, not all of Texas was involved from the impacts of Harvey, but nonetheless it will have a pretty big impact. What we think is happening right now is that a lot of resources are flowing into the affected areas, and this is going to put new building on hold in these areas. There’s going to be a drop-off probably in the next couple of months and then we could expect some catch-up, most likely in the first quarter next year.”  

Other videos in the MBANow series can be viewed at the MBA YouTube channel, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Swk2VUJeZFI&feature=em-uploademail. The videos are also available on the MBA Insights landing page, https://www.mba.org/publications/insights/insights-publication##SubscriberID####RND##&PageID=21109.