Most Buyers Actively Searching for a Home Have Been Looking for 3+ Months

The Housing Trends Report (HTR) is a research product created by NAHB’s Economics team to track prospective home buyers’ perceptions about the availability and affordability of homes for-sale in their markets.  Results are based on national polls conducted by Morning Consult, but are not seasonally adjusted due to the short time horizon of the series, and therefore caution is advised when interpreting trends or comparing time periods.  This is the fourth (and last) of a series of posts highlighting results for the second quarter of 2018.

As published earlier, 14% of adults responding to our poll in the second quarter of 2018 are planning to purchase a home in the next 12 months.  A follow-up question asked that group if they were already actively trying to find a house or still just in the planning stage:  49% said they were already actively engaged in the search process, a share that was somewhat higher than in Qtr1’18 (42%) but still lower than in Qtr4’17 (67%).

More granular second quarter 2018 results show that half or nearly half of all prospective buyers planning a home purchase within the next year are already actively looking for a home, regardless of what generation they belong to (51% of Millennials, 49% or Gen X’ers, and 46% of Boomers).

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