A healthy housing market is pretty much a requirement for the ongoing healing of the U.S. economy, USA Today reports.
That’s why Monday’s upbeat reading on builder confidence in August equated to a major plus.
Maury Harris, an economist at UBS, is expecting yet another good reading on housing, expecting more builders to break ground on new homes.
He forecasts July housing starts to jump 9.7% to 980,000 units compared with June, which is higher than the 966,000 new home starts Wall Street is expecting. It’s also well above the 893,000 starts in June.
For all of 2014, Harris told clients, we continue to forecast starts of 1.05 million annualized units. In 2015, he said the firm projects 1.25 million units.
