Despite recent market woes around the Federal Reserve’s announcement to begin tapering its bond-buying program, the housing recovery keeps chugging along, according to Freddie Mac’s July outlook.
As a result, the latter half of the year is expected to keep pace with the housing momentum gained during the first half of 2013.
"We won't know the immediate impact on the pop in mortgage rates for another couple months," said Freddie Mac vice president and chief economist Frank Nothaft.
He added, "However, we don't expect them to stall the housing recovery because demand is strong, supply is limited and housing affordability remains strong in most markets for most families."
Seasonally adjusted, single-family house prices were roughly up 5% in national indexes in the first half of the year. While the blistering place in home prices is unlikely to continue, the second half of the year will post moderate growth at a rate of closer to 3% to 4%, for a total gain of roughly 9% for the calendar year.
In the first quarter of 2013, roughly 65% of newly completed apartments were rented, up substantially from 2009 when rates were about 50%.
Good fundamentals have driven the renaissance in apartment construction, explained the government-sponsored enterprise.
For instance, through the first five months of 2013 multifamily housing starts were near a 300,000 annual pace, about the same as the average pace during 1997 and 2006.
Meanwhile, recent 'Taper Talk' has led to a jump in interest rates with the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage up a full percentage point since mid-May.
The climb is expected to continue with rates expected to gradually end the year around 4.6% to 4.7%.
The labor market added 1.2 million net new jobs through June, marking the best first half of the year since 2005 with construction contributing 100,000 jobs.
In the future, markets can expect this same pace to continue in the second half the year.
