Connect with us

Finance

New construction remains popular as existing home listings continue to lag

Published

on

The NAHB index rose by three points in March, rising to the highest levels since July.  (iStock)

New construction homes are becoming more popular, mainly due to the low inventory of existing homes.

The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index — which measures the market conditions of new home sales — rose by three points to 51 in March. This is the highest it’s been since July. This rise in the index signals a greater desire for new construction among current homebuyers.

“The solid level of single-family production in February tracks closely with rising builder sentiment, and with mortgage rates expected to moderate further this year, this will provide an added boost for single-family building,” Carl Harris, the NAHB’s chairman, said.

Although they’re often more costly, newly built homes are even more attractive to new buyers because builders often offer incentives to buy. Compared to existing homes, which tend to go for more than listed and have buyers constantly entering into bidding wars, new builds offer a welcome reprieve.

According to NAHB survey data, builders made significant efforts throughout 2023 to get buyers to consider new builds.

“To get them [buyers] to feel more comfortable, they need to at least feel like they’re getting a deal,” Ali Wolf, Zonda’s chief economist, explained

Many builders offer sales incentives like funds buyers can put toward closing costs, or “flex dollars” to use for home upgrades.

Around 38% of builders have also been willing to build smaller homes that are more affordable. Plus, 33% of builders focused on offering more affordable finishes and designs.

If you’re currently searching for the right mortgage, you can explore your mortgage and rate options in minutes by visiting Credible.

NEW CONSTRUCTION HOMES POPULAR AMONG MILLENNIALS DESPITE HIGH HOUSING COSTS

Homes remain unaffordable as interest rates get stuck in the high 6% range

While new builds are on the rise, the existing home market remains largely unaffordable for the average buyer. Mortgage rates continue to hover around the high 6% range and many homes are still high-priced.

“You know, when you zoom out, affordability is still very, very low from a historical perspective,” Odeta Kushi, the deputy chief economist at First American Financial Corp, said.

Average incomes across the country aren’t able to keep up with the housing market. Housing prices have risen two times faster than income levels, a Home Bay study found.

“The problem is that home price appreciation is likely to continue, probably a little bit quicker than income growth,” Charlie Dougherty, a senior economist at Wells Fargo, said.

The median-priced home in the U.S. is $433,100. To afford that price, Americans need to have an income around $166,000, but the average income of Americans is just $74,580, according to the Home Bay study.

To see if you qualify for a mortgage based on your current credit score and salary, consider visiting Credible, where you can compare multiple mortgage lenders at once.

HOMEBUYERS GAINED THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS AS MORTGAGE INTEREST RATES FALL: REDFIN

Homebuyers remain optimistic despite challenges

Despite low affordability and higher-than-expected interest rates, homebuyers remain generally optimistic about the housing market.

Fannie Mae’s Home Purchase Sentiment Index increased by 2.1 points in February for the third consecutive month. About 65% of consumers said it was a good time to sell, up from January when 60% said it was a good time.

“Consumer attitudes toward home-selling conditions increased markedly in February, with current homeowners, in particular, expressing greater optimism that it’s a ‘good time to sell,’ a development that may foreshadow an upcoming increase in existing home listings,” Doug Duncan, a senior vice president at Fannie Mae, said.

There’s still hope among homebuyers that mortgage interest rates will drop, adding some affordability to their homebuying search.

“If their expectations come true and rates move closer to the 6-percent mark by the end of 2024, as we currently expect, then it’s likely that consumer sentiment on both sides of the transaction will improve, perhaps leading to a further thawing of the housing market,” Duncan said.

If you’re looking to purchase a home in today’s market, you can explore your mortgage options by visiting Credible to compare rates and lenders and get a mortgage preapproval letter in minutes.

BIDEN WANTS TO GIVE HOMEBUYERS $400 PER MONTH: STATE OF THE UNION

Have a finance-related question, but don’t know who to ask? Email The Credible Money Expert at [email protected] and your question might be answered by Credible in our Money Expert column.

Continue Reading

Finance

Treasury Secretary Bessent says market woes are more about tech stock sell-off than Trump’s tariffs

Published

on

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent speaks to reporters outside the West Wing after doing a television interview on the North Lawn of the White House on March 13, 2025 in Washington, DC. 

Andrew Harnik | Getty Images

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent said Wednesday the sell-off in the stock market is due more to a sharp pullback in the biggest technology stocks instead of the protectionist policies coming from the Trump administration.

“I’m trying to be Secretary of Treasury, not a market commentator. What I would point out is that especially the Nasdaq peaked on DeepSeek day so that’s a Mag 7 problem, not a MAGA problem,” Bessent said on Bloomberg TV Wednesday evening.

Bessent was referring to Chinese AI startup DeepSeek, whose new language models sparked a rout in U.S. technology stocks in late January. The emergence of DeepSeek’s highly competitive and potentially much cheaper models stoked doubts about the billions that the big U.S. tech companies are spending on AI.

The so-called Magnificent 7 stocks — Apple, Amazon, Tesla, Alphabet, Microsoft, Meta and Nvidia — started selling off drastically, pulling the tech-heavy Nasdaq Composite into correction territory. The tech-heavy benchmark is down about 13% from its record high reached on December 16.

However, the secretary downplayed the impact from President Donald Trump’s steep tariffs, which caught many investors off guard and fueled fears of a re-acceleration in inflation, slower economic growth and even a recession. Many investors have blamed the tariff rollout for driving the S&P 500 briefly into correction territory from its record reached in late February. Wall Street defines a correction as a drop of 10% from a recent high.

Stock Chart IconStock chart icon

hide content

S&P 500, YTD

Trump signed an aggressive “reciprocal tariff” policy at the White House Wednesday evening, slapping duties of at least 10% and even higher for some countries. The actions sparked a huge sell-off in the stock market overnight, with the S&P 500 futures declining nearly 4% and the blue-chip Dow Jones Industrial Average shedding 1,100 points. The losses will likely but the S&P 500 back into correction territory in Thursday’s session.

“It’s going to be fine if we put the best economic conditions in place,” Bessent said in a separate interview on Fox Wednesday evening. “If you go back and look, the stock market actually peaked on the [DeepSeek] Chinese AI announcement. So a lot of what we have seen has been just an idiosyncratic tech sell-off.”

Continue Reading

Finance

Conservative cable channel Newsmax shares plunge more than 70% after a dizzying 2-day surge

Published

on

A Newsmax booth broadcasts as attendees try out the guns on display at the National Rifle Association (NRA) annual convention in Houston, Texas, U.S. May 29, 2022. 

Callaghan O’hare | Reuters

Shares of conservative news channel Newsmax plunged more than 70% on Wednesday as its meteoric rise as a new public company proved to be short-lived.

The stock tumbled a whopping 72% in afternoon trading, following a 2,230% surge in Newsmax’s first two days of trading after debuting on the New York Stock Exchange. At one point, the rally gave the company a market capitalization of nearly $30 billion — surpassing the market cap of legacy media companies like Warner Bros. Discovery and Fox Corp.

Newsmax was listed on the NYSE via a so-called Regulation A offering, instead of a traditional IPO. Such an offering allows small companies to raise capital without undergoing the full SEC registration process. The primary focus is to sell to retail investors, in this case It was sold to approximately 30,000 retail investors. 

The public offering indeed garnered the attention from retail traders, some of whom touted the stock as the “New GME” in online chatrooms. GME refers to the meme stock GameStop, which made Wall Street history in 2021 by its speculative trading boom.

Newsmax has a small “float,” or shares available for trading. Less than 6% of Newsmax shares, or 7.5 million shares out of a total of 128 million fully diluted shares, are available for public trading.

The conservative TV news outlet has seen its ratings rise with the election of President Donald Trump and other prominent Republicans — although it still falls behind the dominant Fox News. Overall, Newsmax ranks in the top 20 among cable network average viewership in both prime time and daytime, Nielsen said.

Continue Reading

Finance

Stocks making the biggest moves midday: TSLA, DJT, AMZN, RIVN

Published

on

Continue Reading

Trending