February 2018 Reports and March Preliminary Data

New titles moved up 9.7% from January with 15.8% growth in single-section titles and 3.8% growth in multi-sections.

The 850 new home total for the month was down -3.1% from February of 2017.

The top five counties for new installations for the month were all counties impacted by Hurricane Harvey, and year-to-date, from the geographic distribution of titling, the Harvey rebuild effort and increased oil activity in the Permian Basin appear to be the major contributors to year-over-year growth. In fact, the five largest counties in the state are all down through the first two months of the year.

March titles are tracking above February by 47% but more surprisingly they are above March 2017 by 23.2%. Much like the disclaimer I made last month the totals from March last year had large upward revisions after the official reporting window, so once again time will tell if March holds pace and can ultimately beat out March of 2017’s 1,402 new titles.

Addressing last month’s note of caution though, January titles were revised up by even more than they were in 2017, so two-thirds of the way through Q1 new home titles are up 5.1% over 2017.

Since February, the price of oil has continued to increase and the GLO submitted its action plan to HUD for final approval last week but won’t start spending permanent recovery funds for homeowner assistance until Q4 of this year, so we expect a strong continuation of demand in both the Harvey recovery and oil play counties for the remainder of 2018 and into 2019.

Used titles saw very large increases over last month and February of 2017 due to a community title transfer.