Every two weeks, Oldcastle Building Solutions Business Intelligence prepares a report focused on understanding and analyzing construction market data and trends.
This in-depth report is developed primarily for internal distribution, but Oldcastle Building Solutions exists to inform construction professionals like you, so we're making this report available for anyone who's interested in reading it.
What's New In This Report?
Highlights
The ABI rose 3.3 points in November 2017 to 55.0. Both the new project inquiries and design contract components made gains and all sectors showed positive momentum.
In December 2017, the HMI rose 74, up five points over the year. The traffic component of the index jumped 8 points to 58, its highest score since 1998.
Construction Update
In November 2017, housing permits reflected an annual rate of 1.3M, 3.4% above its year-ago rate. Over the year, Single Family permits are up 9.7%, while Multi-Family permits are down 7.0%.
Housing starts in November 2017 were 12.9% above their year-ago rate, with 930K Single Family starts and 367K Multi-Family starts in the month.
733K new Single Family homes were sold in November 2017, 26.6% above the revised year-ago rate. The third consecutive month of strong sales resulted in the supply of new homes for sale (at current sales rate) to drop to 4.6 months from 6.1 months in August.
Economic Update
In December 2017, the unemployment rate held steady at 4.1% after adding 1488K jobs. The Construction Industry added 30K jobs in the month, after adding 24K in November 2017.
The Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) reported a 9.8% increase from the previous quarter in their Construction Backlog Indicator (CBI), to 9.5 months in Q3 2017.
