Fannie Mae’s June report on the economy and housing showed a decline in economic growth, as well as residential home construction – but an incline in multifamily construction in the same time period. We look at some of the report’s key points in today’s BAM Blog…
To read the report in its entirety, click here.
The Economy
- Disappointing job growth, with on net zero additional job growth over the previous two months.
- Wages are continuing to grow at a strong pace year-over-year.
- Household survey showed unemployment remained at historic lows.
- Construction employment did increase by 5200 this month, which Fannie said should hopefully should help with some of the supply issues faced by home-builders.
- The report remains consistent with Fannie’s forecast of a slowing economy, and they assert conditions will likely not shift the Fed from its patient wait-and-see stance.
Home Construction: Both single and multifamily
- Latest data showed positive numbers for households’ net worth in the first quarter.
- Data also showed slow spending on residential home construction.
- Single family mortgage debt outstanding hit the highest level since the end of 2009 – although the quarterly increase was the smallest in three years.
- April was the fourth straight month of decline in private residential construction spending.
- The gain seen in multifamily construction spending was outweighed by the flat single-family construction spending and falling improvement spending.
- The data shows private private residential construction spending fell 0.6% in April. Single-family construction was unchanged; however, multifamily spending rose 2.3%.
- Looking at a year-ago basis: total private residential construction spending fell 9.4%, while multifamily spending rose 8.4%. Single-family spending fell 7.9% and improvement spending fell 16.3%.
