A recent NAHB poll of 17,601 American adults in the third quarter of 2019 revealed that only a small 12% are planning a home purchase in the next 12 months. The National Association of Home Builders NAHB prepares this report every quarter in a year.
From those planning to buy a home, only 44% are actively engaged in the process of finding a home to buy. Compared with the third quarter of 2018, this rate came down 3 points.
This means that the lowest mortgage rates in the past three years did not lead more prospective home buyers to become actively engaged in the process of looking for a home.
Across generations, over 40% of each group moved beyond just planning and were already searching in the third quarter of 2019.
Geographically, prospective buyers in the Northeast are the most likely to be actively looking for a home (50%), followed by those in the West (45%), South (43%), and Midwest (40%).
Buyers who were actively engaged in the search for a home were also asked about the number of months they have spent looking.
In the third quarter of 2019, 58% had been at it for at least three months, slightly higher than the 55% reporting that length of time a year earlier. Meanwhile, the share of these active buyers searching for less than three months dropped from 45% to 42% during this period.
Source: Eye on Housing – Fewer than Half of Prospective Buyers Are Actively Looking for a Home