The Week Ahead: How Will the Housing Market Exit 2021?

On Thursday, December 16, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and U.S. Census Bureau will release its new residential construction statistics for November 2021, a barometer of how the 2021 housing market will finish, and how Q1 of2022 will begin.

HUD and the Census Bureau’s data provides national and regional data on the number of new housing units authorized by building permits; authorized, but not started; started; under construction; and completed. The data are for new, privately-owned housing units, excluding "HUD-code" manufactured (mobile) homes. The data are from the Building Permits Survey, and from the Survey of Construction (SOC), which is partially funded HUD.

Home buyers are forced to deal with the continued imbalance between supply and listing prices, as Redfin recently reported that median home sale prices rose to a record high in the U.S. to a new all-time high of $360,250, up 14% year-over-year. This total was up 30% from the same period in 2019. Meanwhile, asking prices of newly listed homes rose 11% from the same time a year ago, and were up 27% from 2019 to a median asking price of $347,500.

As prices climb, Zillow has found that there has been a shortfall of 1.35 million homes in the largest 35 metropolitan areas tracked by Zillow. And while the number of permits has been about average in the past, at the rate builders are moving, they still must build approximately 2.7 years’ worth of homes in addition to the ones they are currently building to meet demand.

"Builders in recent months have put the pedal to the metal to get new homes up and meet a rush of demand, and we just saw the first full year of above-average construction since the mid-2000s housing crash," said Zillow Senior Economist Jeff Tucker. "This isn't a new boom cycle of new construction so much as it's an attempt to get even from the last bust. There is still a long way to go to catch up from more than a decade of slow construction, and some markets have longer to go than others."

Here's what else is happening in The Week Ahead:

• CoreLogic Loan Performance Insights Report (Tuesday)
• Sell USDA REO Properties: A Virtual Training Presented by Dawson's Management (Wednesday)
• MBA Weekly Applications Survey (Wednesday)
• NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index Report (Wednesday)
• Realtor.com Weekly Housing Market Recap (Wednesday)
• Freddie Mac Primary Mortgage Market Survey (Thursday)
• U.S. Department of Labor's Unemployment Insurance Weekly Claims Report (Thursday)
• Black Knight weekly forbearance data (Friday)