- Year-over-year single-family housing authorizations decrease for the third straight quarter.
- Maintenance and remodeling volumes experience slow rise after six months of declines.
- Housing stock in Hurricane Dorian impacted North Carolina is still recovering from 2018 severe weather.
Q2 hedge fund letters, conference, scoops etc
Economic Recession Indicator
- Three straight quarters of declines (4.17% year over year) in single-family housing authorizations – a key indicator of historical recessions.
- Despite this, existing housing maintenance, a gauge of consumer confidence, is now rising consistently again after six months of decreasing activity, indicating consumers at least have enough confidence in the market to embark on property updates which improve the residential housing stock – an asset class that’s valued at more than $35 trillion.
Hurricane Property Recovery
- In the wake of Hurricane Dorian, North Carolina is still very much recovering from Hurricane Florence and 2018's severe convective storms and tornadoes.
- Maintenance activity rose 34.84% between September and October 2018 following Hurricane Florence. As of August 2019, one year after Florence made landfall, maintenance levels are 17.84% higher than they were on average in 2017 and 2018.
- This suggests that even amidst a national housing slowdown and a potential economic recession, some local housing markets, like in North Carolina, are still strong enough to sustain higher maintenance levels to repair their housing stock.
- Maintenance activity rose 34.84% between September and October 2018 following Hurricane Florence. As of August 2019, one year after Florence made landfall, maintenance levels are 17.84% higher than they were on average in 2017 and 2018.
The full report is available here.
About Buildfax
BuildFax, headquartered in Austin, Texas, is trusted by the largest insurance and financial institutions in the world to deliver business-critical property condition and history data.
With the only database of its kind encompassing more than 84 billion data points on commercial and residential structures, BuildFax delivers detailed data on remodeling, solar installations, new construction, roof age, major systems, maintenance history and more.
