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Th e M Rep o RT | 29 Feature compared with more than 3.0 percent gains that were typical prior to the recession. "The current expansion is one of the weakest in history, largely because of relatively weak consumer spending growth," Duncan said. "In addition to weak wage growth, consumers' reluctance to incur debt, especially revolving debt, largely credit cards, has restrained spending growth." Gallup reported that consumer spending in this country showed little movement between 2009 and 2012. The figure began to rise in late 2012 and continued to do so into 2013. Since then, it has hovered at that same level 25 to 28 percent above the post-recession plateau. With an allusion to two much older real estate markets, Nothaft called the recovery "a tale of two tracks." Rental housing was the first sector to recover coming out of the Great Recession and, on the strength of the prime millennial consumer segment, has remained robust. "Nationally, rental vacancy rates are at their lowest level since the 1980s, and apartment rental construction is at its highest pace in over a quarter century," he said. "The other tale, however, is the sluggish recovery of single- family and first-time buyers. Single-family construction remains depressed, home-sales turnover remains low, and the homeownership rate has fallen to a 40-year low. Single-family activity levels are at least two years away from resembling a normal pace." The economy is a global one, as U.S. stock market investors were reminded this past summer during China's economic slowdown and devaluation of its currency. Oil prices and the strength of the dollar can have major economic effects that ripple through the housing sector. "International developments threaten to slow the already modest pace of U.S. economic growth," said Duncan of Fannie Mae. "They have also raised challenges to the Fed's plan to raise rates for the first time in nine years." What's Next? T here is very little sense of a sugar rush-type mania to the current housing market. Chastened by the sector's past sins and guided by—or hassled depending on whose perspective one might get—new safeguards such as the CFPB, the housing market appears, for the most part, to chart a bubble-free course. "With prospective homeowners undergoing stricter vetting procedures prior to securing a mortgage, we believe that the increase in housing activity is on much more solid ground today than it was in the prior housing market expansion," Chan said. "With jobs continuing to be created at a healthy clip and housing prices rising by 4.4 percent according to the Case-Shiller Home Price Index, prospective homebuyers should feel comfortable that such prices are greatly exceeding the yearly rise in the Consumer Price Index, currently rising by just 0.2 percent." Nothaft predicts 30-year fixed-rate loan rates to hover between 4 and 4.25 percent around year's end. Don't be fooled by flat fourth quarter national home price indexes that are not seasonally adjusted. "Household formations will top a million and be at the best pace since before the Great Recession, keeping rental markets tight," he added. Brian a. Lee is an Atlanta-based freelance writer and former editor of Western Real Estate Business magazine. Although a big fan of mortgage and housing content, the Wake Forest and University of Georgia graduate considers his top moment in journalism a one-on-one interview with baseball legend Hank Aaron in 2009. The economy is a global one, as U.S. stock market investors were reminded this past summer during China's economic slowdown and devaluation of its currency. oil prices and the strength of the dollar can have major economic effects that ripple through the housing sector.