Glimmer of Hope in Otherwise Gloomy Builder Confidence Numbers

Glimmer of Hope in Otherwise Gloomy Builder Confidence Numbers

The Housing Market Index (HMI) from the National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB)--typically referred to simply as "builder confidence"--is argued to be both an advance indicator and a lagging indicator depending on who is doing the arguing.  It was more prescient as a harbinger of better times ahead roughly a decade ago, but most recently, it was a bit late to drop compared to New Home Sales. There's more correlation and more sense of it being an advance indicator when comparing it to something more construction-focused such as Housing Starts. Whether chicken or egg, there's no question that most housing-related metrics have been in increasingly bad shape as 2022 progressed.  Builder Confidence is now a sobering example of that, having fallen for 12 straight months to t