Source: Yahoo! Finance —
The year can’t end fast enough for folks in the housing market.
After a blockbuster 18 months that ran from mid-2020 through the end of last year, 2022 seemed like a year almost everything went wrong for housing.
And the monthly read on homebuilder sentiment released Monday served as the perfect coda on this year-long nightmare.
The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB)/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index for December — more casually referred to as “homebuilder sentiment” — showed confidence among builders dropped this month for the 12th time this year.
Which means every month in 2022, optimism about housing from the people building houses got worse.
In December’s report, NAHB chief economist Robert Dietz noted the decline in the index to 31 from 33 in November was the smallest in the last six months, “indicating that we are possibly nearing the bottom of the cycle for builder sentiment,” Dietz said. Any read over 50 indicates a positive read on market conditions, reads below 50 reflect a negative view.
