Here’s one of those crucial sets of numbers I was talking about earlier today. Every month, homebuilders are surveyed by the National Association of Home Builders about their confidence in the market.
This month, the survey showed the lowest level of confidence in 16 years, since February 1991.
From the NAHB release:
“Builders continue to report serious impacts of tighter lending standards on current home sales as well as cancellations, and they continue to trim prices and offer a variety of nonprice incentives to work down sizeable inventory positions,” said NAHB President Brian Catalde, a home builder from El Segundo, California.
Less than one-third of the 400-some builders surveyed think the housing market is good or fair, MarketWatch extrapolated from the survey data.
Check out the MarketWatch report for a graph showing the ups and downs in the builder index. And for more where this came from:
“The bottom of the housing market appears nowhere in sight,” wrote Patrick McPherron, an economist for Moody’s Economy.com, in an analytic note.