Last Tuesday April Housing Starts were UP 5.8% at an annual rate of 672,000 units. This puts them UP 40.9% over a year ago, with single-family starts UP 10.2% for the month. April New Building Permits were off 11.5%, at an annual rate of 606,000. Some said these stats reflect builders' response to the expiration of the homebuyer tax credit. Nevertheless, housing has turned the corner....
USDA UPDATE: In a nut shell, the USDA program is out of money (except for disaster funds in a few areas). The Senate now has three competing bills so the work out process has begun. Nothing scheduled on the Senate floor so this could take some time. USDA issued guidance stating that they would issue condition commitments so we could proceed with the loan process but not close until the program was funded. USDA has now pulled that guidance to issue conditional commitments. As you can see, this is a mess. Investors such as Chase, etc. will not take locks unless you have a conditional commitment or are in a county that has adequate disaster funds available as they see this as hedging a “phantom” pipeline.
