Fannie Mae: Consumer confidence bounced back in September
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WASHINGTON, DC – Fannie Mae’s Home Purchase Sentiment Index showed consumer confidence in the home buying and selling market bounced back in September after the recent dip.
A strong home-price environment coupled with a slight improvement in consumers’ economic outlet, push up the group’s Good Time to Sell indicator.
Additionally, the Good Time to Buy component increased as high rental costs may be encouraging more renters to consider homeownership.
“With consumers’ expectations for rental price increases continuing to outpace their expectations for home price growth, many consumers may view homeownership as a more attractive option. This should have positive implications for the housing market, which remains well below historical norms in relation to housing starts. said Doug Duncan, senior vice president and chief economist at Fannie Mae..
“We noted last week that, despite a relatively dismal jobs report, the addition of 8,000 construction jobs, the biggest gain in four months, may be a sign of grudging progress for the supply side of housing,” he said.
The share of respondents who said that it is a good time to buy a house rose 1 percentage point to 64 percent.
Those who say it is a good time to sell rose 5 percentage points to 52 percent.
The percent of respondents who said that home prices will go up over the next 12 months fell to 45 percent, but the percentage who said they’d go down remained constant at 9 percent.
The share who expect mortgage interest rates to go up in the next 12 months rose 1 percentage point to 55 percent. The share who say mortgage rates will go down remained the same at 5 percent.