HMI: Builder Confidence Remains Strong in February

The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) finds builder confidence in the market for newly-built single-family homes edged one point lower to 74 in January.

With the exception of December 2017, the index has remained at the highest levels since July 1999 over the last three months.

Methodology

The NAHB/Wells Fargo HMI is a weighted average of three separate component indices: Present Single-Family Sales, Single-Family Sales for the Next Six Months, and Traffic of Prospective Buyers. Each month, a panel of builders rates the first two on a scale of “good,” “fair” or “poor” and the last on a scale of “high to very high,” “average” or “low to very low”. An index is calculated for each series by applying the formula “(good – poor + 100)/2” or, for Traffic, “(high/very high – low/very low + 100)/2”.  

Each resulting index is first seasonally adjusted, then weighted to produce the HMI. The weights are .5920 for Present Sales, .1358 for Sales for the Next Six Months, and .2722 for Traffic. The weights were chosen to maximize the correlation with starts through the following six months.

The HMI can range between 0 and 100.