- Prior was 37
- Current conditions 38 vs 40 prior
- Buyer traffic 25 vs 25 prior
- Sales expectations for six months 45 vs 45 prior
With the war ending and oil prices lower, my guess is that the bottom is in for this indicator. The US housing industry has been in a deep recession since the post-covid boom and it's not going to be a v-shaped recovery but I think we're near the bottom of the U-shaped bottom.
For background, the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index is the homebuilders' confidence gauge, run by the National Association of Home Builders since 1985. Each month it surveys around 900 single-family builders, asking them to rate current sales, sales expectations six months out, and buyer traffic. Those responses roll into a headline index where 50 is the line in the sand — above signals more builders see conditions as good than poor, below means pessimism dominates.
At 35 in June, builder sentiment is still firmly in the dumps and has been for a while — the index has been camped in the mid-30s all year, nowhere near breakeven. The story hasn't changed: affordability is broken. High mortgage rates, elevated home prices, and stubborn land and construction costs are keeping buyers parked on the sidelines. Builders have responded by leaning hard on price cuts and incentives to move inventory, which compresses margins even when they do make the sale.
For context, the index bottomed at 8 in the depths of the 2009 housing crash and peaked at 90 in the 2020 rate-driven boom — so 35 is recession-adjacent territory, not crisis, but a long way from healthy. It lands a day ahead of housing starts and tends to lead them.
