Content about David Crowe

Las Vegas -- The National Association of Home Builders sees the residential construction industry gaining momentum in a larger economy that includes a few wild cards.

At the International Builders’ Show here in Las Vegas, the Washington, D.C.-based trade association updated its 2013 housing starts forecast to 949,000 starts in 2013, up 21.5% from the prior year. At the end of January, the group had forecast 932,000.   

Builder confidence in the market for newly built, single-family homes rose six points for July on the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI). This is the largest one-month gain recorded by the index in nearly a decade, and brings the HMI to its highest point -- 35 -- since March 2007.

Orlando, Fla. -- Perhaps the second half of the seminar title said it all: “How long can the good times last?” A large group of skittish apartment and condo builders attended the multi-family forecast of David Crowe, the chief economist of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), here on the second day of the International Builders' Show. What they hoped to hear was that the high demand for rental units will continue to fuel multi-family starts, which continue to outpace single family starts.

The list of improving U.S. housing markets tracked by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) almost doubled in January 2012 with the addition of 40 new metro areas. The NAHB’s First American Improving Markets Index (IMI) now counts 76 improving markets, up from 41 in December, with 31 states and the District of Columbia represented by at least one entry.

As a result of too much good material and not enough space, here is a collection of semi-random notes from the International Builders’ Show in Orlando, Fla.  


• Question: Does anybody really pay $99 a day for Internet connection — the asking price at the convention center? 


• I told my cab driver what I was doing in Orlando. 


“That’s funny,” he said. 


“Why?”


Orlando -- The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) made it very clear during the International Builders' Show that it's prepared to fight for the mortgage interest deduction. 

Orlando, Fla. -- The annual Housing and Economic Outlook at the 2011 International Builders' Show had some relatively good news for attendees.

It's a long way from 1973, when "single family" usually meant "single story." But numbers clearly show a dip in the size of new American houses.

After three decades of steadily expanding home sizes, the average area of a new house competed in the United States is down  more than 80 square feet from its 2007 peak, according to statistics released recently by the Census Bureau. The average size of a house nationwide declined to 2,438 square feet in 2009. At its peak, the figure was 2,521 square feet.