Housing inventory

Measures of current sales of single-family homes and prospective-buyer traffic, dropped to their lowest levels since the end of 2023.

Tariffs, the employment pool and requirements to tap financing are potential roadblocks that need to be addressed in order to increase new builds.

President Donald Trump said he would plow ahead with new tariffs on Canada and Mexico starting Tuesday, a broadside against the two biggest US trading partners that underscores his push to remake global trade.

A Commerce Department investigation will examine whether exporters like Canada, Germany, and Brazil are dumping lumber into US markets at the expense of American economic prosperity and national security, officials said.

Purchases of new single-family homes decreased 10.5% last month to a 657,000 annualized rate, according to government data issued Wednesday.

A national gauge of prices rose 3.9% from a year earlier, according to data from S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller.

Shares of all 18 members in the S&P Composite 1500 Homebuilding Index fell, sending the gauge to the lowest intraday level since December 2023, after results from luxury homebuilder Toll Brothers Inc. and key construction data Wednesday indicated the residential real estate market may be in store for more turbulence. 

New residential construction decreased 9.8% to an annualized pace of 1.37 million last month, slipping after a nearly 16% surge in December, according to government data released Wednesday.

Builder confidence had surged following Trump's election win but home financing costs stuck around 7% in recent months have sapped demand and sent builder stocks tumbling.

A $1 billion assessment announced Tuesday for California's FAIR Plan, the state-mandated insurer of last resort, is expected to drive up premiums as companies will likely pass some of the costs onto homeowners.

Contract signings fell 5.5% to 74.2 in December, according to a National Association of Realtors index released Thursday.

Sales of new US homes ended 2024 on a high note in December as customers took advantage of incentives from builders, leading to a second straight year of increased purchases.  

Contract closings of existing homes last month increased 2.2% to an annualized rate of 4.24 million, the most since February, according to National Association of Realtors data released Friday.

Los Angeles already had a housing affordability crisis before devastating wildfires burned entire neighborhoods to the ground. The disaster is making it worse. 

The residential market is expected to face challenges from stubbornly high mortgage rates and limited supply in 2025, particularly after Fed Chair Jerome Powell's comments on Wednesday indicating fewer rate cuts are coming.

Contract closings increased 4.8% to an annualized rate of 4.15 million in November, the most since March, according to data released Thursday by the National Association of Realtors.

US new-home construction unexpectedly fell in November as a drop in multifamily projects mitigated a rebound in starts of single-family houses, solely in the storm-ravaged South.  

The latest plans include details on promoting housing development in underserved areas and increasing secondary market access to rural institutions.

U.S. lumber prices, which already have risen in recent months due to lower production in Canada, could see further gains after President-elect Donald Trump's proposed tariffs on trade from north of the border.

"If he manages to get through the policies that he's proposing, that will be really bad news," says Desmond Lachman, an economist at the conservative American Enterprise Institute.