More New Homes Improve Expectations of Housing Availability

Increased levels of new home construction and sales are leading some buyers to expect the home search to get easier in the months ahead.  According to the latest Housing Trends Report for the second quarter of 2023, 29% of prospective buyers are anticipating housing availability to ease up ahead, an improvement over the 24% and 26% who had similar expectations in the final quarter of 2022 and the first quarter of 2023, respectively.

Housing availability expectations have improved all around the country.  Between the final quarter of 2022 and the second quarter of 2023, the share of buyers expecting an easier home search ahead rose most significantly in the Northeast (28% to 36%), followed by the West (27% to 34%), the Midwest (19% to 25%), and the South (24% to 27%).

Another way to measure buyers’ perceptions of housing inventory is to ask them if they are seeing more/fewer/the same number of homes for-sale (with desired features and price point) in their markets.  By this measure, buyers’ perceptions have remained essentially unchanged, as the share seeing more homes available for-sale* in their markets barely moved from 30% in the final quarter of 2022 to 31% in the first two quarters of 2023.

Inventory perceptions changed unevenly across regions.  From the final quarter of 2022 to the second quarter of 2023, the share of buyers seeing more homes (with desired features and price point) increased in the Northeast (26% to 42%) and Midwest (23% to 28%), but edged down in the South (32% to 31%) and the West (31% to 30%).

* Results come from the Housing Trends Report (HTR) – a research product created by the NAHB Economics team with the goal of measuring prospective home buyers’ perceptions about the availability and affordability of homes for-sale in their markets.  The HTR is produced quarterly to track changes in buyers’ perceptions over time.  All data are derived from national polls of representative samples of American adults conducted for NAHB by Morning Consult.  Results are seasonally adjusted.  A description of the poll’s methodology and sample characteristics can be found here. This is the third in a series of six posts highlighting results for the 2^nd quarter of 2023.  See previous post on plans to buy and new vs. existing preferences.