By Jann Swanson | Mortgage News Daily
The February installment of the National Housing Survey (NHS) might have broken a record for breaking records. Fannie Mae says its Home Purchase Sentiment Index (HPSI), based on six components of the survey, increased by 5.6 percentage points from both January’s level and that of February 2016 to 88.3, an all-time high. Five of the six components were higher than in January and three also set survey records.
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Doug Duncan, Fannie Mae’s senior vice president and chief economist said, “The latest post-election surge in optimism puts the HPSI at its highest level since its starting point in 2011. Millennials showed especially strong increases in job confidence and income gains, a necessary precursor for increased housing demand from first-time homebuyers. Preliminary research results from our team find that millennials are accelerating the rate at which they move out of their parents’ homes and form new households. However, continued slow supply growth implies continued strong price appreciation and affordability constraints facing millennials and first-time buyers in many markets.”
