Business Contact Surveys: Construction and Real Estate
February 2014
Both Southeast builders and brokers reported that sales on a year-over-year basis remain flat to slightly up.
The majority of brokers continued to report that home inventory levels were down from one year earlier. Most builders reported that inventory levels remain unchanged.
The majority of brokers and builders indicated that home prices increased slightly in December.
Most brokers indicated that buyer traffic was up on a year-over- year basis while more builders began to indicate an increase in buyer traffic.
Over the next three months, builders expect sales growth to be flat to slightly up while brokers expectations are mixed. While expectations remain fairly positive overall, fewer contacts are as optimistic about sales growth as they were a year ago.
More than half of all builders expect activity to increase over the next three months. With that said, fewer builders expect construction activity to increase over the next three months relative to a year ago.
Note: The poll results are based on responses from 44 residential brokers and 24 homebuilders and were collected January 6–15, 2014.
The housing poll's diffusion indexes are calculated as the percentage of total respondents reporting increases minus the percentage reporting declines. Positive values in the index indicate increased activity; negative values indicate decreased activity.