(Read more: Map: Tracking the recovery)

While inventories improved slightly in August on a national basis, up 0.4 percent month-to-month, they are still down 6.3 percent from a year ago, according to the National Association of Realtors.

While home sales were higher in August, the Realtors said it was, “the last hurrah,” as several indicators showed buyer traffic slowed dramatically at the end of the summer.

“The sharpest falloff in the HousingPulse Homebuyer Traffic Indexes was seen among current homeowners, the largest group of home purchasers in this year’s housing market. The first-time homebuyer group also saw a decline in its traffic index,” according to a new report from Campbell/Inside Mortgage Finance.

The fall and winter months are traditionally the slowest in the housing business, and weaker demand will affect prices. Sales of newly built homes have not exactly been gangbusters, and new orders at both Lennar and KB Home were weaker than expected. Make no mistake, underlying demand exists, it’s just a question of when it emerges in force.

So far, even weak demand has pushed prices higher, again, due to historically low supply.

(Read more: Real estate’s new frontier: Crowdfunding)

“Construction of single-family homes has been depressed since late 2007, while the U.S. population has increased by more than 12 million over that time,” said economist Patrick Newport of IHS Global Insight. “Since underlying demand is, by our estimate, running at a rate nearly twice that of housing completions, the shortages are likely to get larger before getting smaller.”

This means that home-price gains, as measured by the Case-Shiller indexes, are likely to remain strong for some time, even if they retreat some from the current pace.”

—By CNBC’s Diana Olick. Follow her on Twitter @Diana_Olick.

Questions?Comments? facebook.com/DianaOlickCNBC.

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/101058777

Mortgage applications had been lower for much of the summer, and refinances continue to fall, but applications to purchase a home rose 2 percent last week from the previous week, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association.

This, even as the average contract interest rate for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages with conforming loan balances of $417,000 or less increased to 4.8 percent, the highest since April 2011. They are still down 6 percent in the past month. Mortgage rates, however, have been moving lower this week on weak economic data.

Higher home prices could also be hurting potential sales, as very low inventories continue to cause bidding wars from coast to coast. Inventories of existing homes are down significantly in most of the nation’s major housing markets.

(Read more: Map: Tracking the recovery)

San Francisco, for example is seeing some of the highest home price appreciation, as listings were down 29 percent in July year over year, according to the California Association of Realtors.

“More homes clearly need to be built in the West to relieve price pressure, or the region could soon face pronounced affordability problems,” Yun said.

Single family housing starts were down 2.2 percent in July month to month, as home builders still struggle to find finished lots and skilled labor. Underlying demand is running nearly twice the rate of housing completions, according to IHS Global Insight. Some home builders admit they are slowing production in order to gain pricing power.

(Read more: Home prices across the US defy gravity)

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100993579

“This reflects a characteristically volatile multi-family sector rather than renewed weakness, and we expect homebuilding volumes to rise further later this year,” wrote Paul Diggle of Capital Economics.

Housing starts fell 9.8 percent, but the drop was entirely in apartment construction, which accounts for 30 percent of all residential construction activity, according to the U.S. Commerce Department. Multi-family starts fell by 26.2 percent in June compared to May. Single family housing starts fell by just 0.8 percent month-to-month.

(Read More: Map: Tracking the US Real Estate Recovery)

“Should we be concerned? Not yet,” wrote Patrick Newport of IHS Global Insight. “Builders are still not putting up enough homes. Far from it. By our estimate, underlying demand is running close to 1.4 million. Meanwhile, housing completions in July were 755,000 [annual rate], while housing permits were 911,000.”

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100893375

“What are they so excited about?” asked Hunter. “That they have pricing power.”

Housing completions fell 0.9 percent to an annualized rate of 690,000, well below demand. Underlying demand consists of new households forming (about 1.1 million, according to Census data,) replacement demand (about 250,000 homes) and second home demand (about 50,000,) according to IHS Global Insight.

“The wide gap between housing completions and underlying demand suggests that inventories are likely to get leaner over the next 12 months,” IHS analysts said in a report to investors. “For the record, it takes about seven months on average for a single-family permit to turn into a completed home.”

The supply pinch can be seen quite dramatically in California, where there was barely a two-month supply of homes for sale in May. That, and a change in the mix of home sales from distressed to nondistressed, pushed the median sale price up 32 percent from a year ago. Some might call that a “bubble,” but the real state agents do not.

(Read More: Rising Rates Scare Borrowers Into Action)

“While home prices are increasing at levels above those observed in 2006-2007, the fundamentals of the housing market are much more solid than what we experienced a few years ago,” said Leslie Appleton-Young, chief economist for the California Association of Realtors. “More home buyers are putting down larger down payments, and many of them are opting for more stable loan products.”

That may be, but the jump in the median California home price jump is predominantly due to a change in the mix of homes selling, that is, more nondistressed sales and fewer foreclosure and short sales. The median price is where half the homes sell for more and half sell for less. In May, distressed properties accounted for 31 percent of total sales in California, down from 52 percent of sales a year ago, according to Propertyradar, a data and analytics company. Meanwhile, nondistressed sales were 69 percent of total sales, up from 48 percent a year ago.

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100821976

(Read More: Apartment Building Bubbles as Single-Family Homes Struggles)

Zelman noted an intentional slowing by home builders, who are strapped by labor and supply shortages and who are looking to gain pricing power as the market recovers, as a key driver of apartment demand.

Rising rents are pushing some tenants to move, but not as many as expected. 11.5 percent of departing residents in April left due to rent increases, according to the report, up from 10.9 percent in 2012 but way down from 17 percent in 2011. In addition, more than half of those moving out remained in the apartment rental market. Thirty percent bought a home, and ten percent rented a single family home; the remaining moved in with family or friends.

The concern for investors in the apartment sector, especially in multi-family REITs (real estate investment trusts), is that there is too much new supply coming on line, just as demand is about to turn. The government numbers for housing starts in April added confusion to that argument, but some say the monthly numbers, especially for new construction, which have a wide margin of error, are just “noise.”

(Read More: Rising Rates Rattle Mortgage Market)

“Multi-family starts plunged 38.9 percent to 23,000 units, but the more important average of March and April was still a solid 321,000 units,” noted Michael Montgomery, an economist at IHS Global Insight.

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100746253

After a slew of positive readings on the nation’s housing recovery, sales of newly built homes in October were a big disappointment.

Despite the big public builders reporting big jumps in new orders and builder confidence positively leaping to the highest level since 2006, sales just didn’t compute, and even September’s numbers were revised down.

“The recovery in new home sales is looking a little weaker than we were previously led to believe,” writes Paul Diggle of Capital Economics.

But Diggle points out the positives, specifically that the time between a completion and a new home sale has been falling dramatically, from over 14 months in late 2009 to just over 6 months today. The average historically is five months.

“That drop strikes us as another sign that buyer confidence is improving,” adds Diggle.

But is it improving as much as builder confidence?

“This was a disappointing update,” writes Patrick Newport of HIS Global Insight.

“It indicates that demand for single-family homes is only slowly picking up, not accelerating, as the data previously showed. It also indicated that builders may have jumped the gun a little by accelerating the pace of construction of single-family homes.

(Read More: Cities With the Most Affordable Homes)

A big concern for home builders now is the looming fiscal cliff. The housing recovery depends on the economic recovery and continued improvement in the jobs picture. There is also great concern that the mortgage interest deduction could fall victim to the cliff. That’s why housing lobbyists have upped their budgets this year to $30 million from $27 million in 2011, according to the Center for Responsive Politics. The National Association of Realtors leads by far with a record $25,982,290 spent on lobbying so far.

(Read More: Why the ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Is Kryptonite to Entrepreneurs)

Fears of the fiscal cliff could be impacting potential buyers already. The new home sales monthly number from the U.S. Department of Commerce is based on signed contracts, not closings, so it is a clear gauge of what potential buyers are feeling right now.

(Read More: How ‘Fiscal Cliff’ Could Affect Mortgage Interest Deduction)

“It is making me nervous for sure to have such uncertainty over such a traditional expectation, the mortgage deduction,” says Stephen Paul, of Mid-Atlantic Builders, a Maryland-based company. Paul says he hasn’t seen any cancellations over it yet, but it has come up in conversation plenty.

It is just one more uncertainty that this recovery doesn’t need. All signs are pointing to big gains in the housing market for 2013. Those expectations, however, must be tempered with a dash of perspective yet again. Peter Boockvar of Miller Tabak maps it out well:

“While the housing industry is recovering, new home sales have trended between 360k and 370k for the last 6 months, still 73 percent below the bubblicious peak in July ’05 and not too far above the trough seen in 1982 and still below the bottom seen in the 1991 recession. On one hand, there is plenty of room for continued improvement but on the other, the healing process will take a lot of time and will likely be in fits and starts as recoveries from the aftermath of bubbles typically are.”

SECTOR WATCH: US Home Builders

—Toll Brothers
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—DR Horton
[DHI 
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—Hovnanian Enterprises
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—PulteGroup
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—Ryland Group
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—Lennar Corp
[LEN 
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—Beazer Homes USA
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—Meritage Homes
[MTH 
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—KB Home
[KBH 
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