Freddie Mac recently released its U.S. Economic and Housing Market Outlook for August, showing that despite the lackluster jobs recovery four years into the economic recovery, housing will continue to provide an increasingly positive boost to GDP in the second half of 2013.
Outlook Highlights
• Four years of recovery have only brought lackluster growth. In terms of GDP growth, the current recovery most closely matches the one beginning in May of 1954, but during that four year period the economy also experienced another recession.
• Fortunately, good news in the housing sector bodes well for future economic growth. Recently housing markets have shown solid growth. Housing starts were up 18 percent, home sales gained 13 percent, U.S. house price indexes were about 10 percent higher over the past year and serious delinquency rates have declined to their lowest level since the third quarter of 2008.
• A rapidly improving housing market will help the economic recovery in at least three ways:
◦ First, increased demand for housing will help to stimulate new single-family and multifamily construction and boost home sales. Expect starts to hover just below one million (SAAR) over the second half of the year, the best six-month building pace since the first half of 2008.
