The National Association of Home Builders predicts the number of single-family home starts this year will total 629,000, 43,000 less than its April forecast, according to an article posted at Bloomberg, but NAHB is looking forward to a stronger housing recovering in 2014 and 2015.

“The cards are in play for a decent and fairly strong recovery in 2014 and particularly in 2015,” NAHB Chief Economist David Crowe said in a statement after NAHB’s Fall 2013 Construction Forecast Webinar last week. “From the standpoint of GDP growth, housing has been a plus, growing at two, three and four times the rate of the rest of the economy.”

NAHB said single-family housing starts in 2014 would increase by more than 30% to 826,000, and would exceed 1 million starts in 2015.

Just four years ago, housing had shrunk to an average of 27% of normal production, according to Robert Denk, NAHB’s assistant vice president for forecasting and analysis. In California, Nevada, Arizona and Florida, where construction was especially hot during the boom years, the numbers were even worse.

A steady improvement in the housing market should bring housing starts to 93% of what NAHB considers normal by the end of 2015, Denk said.

Among the continuing challenges Crowe cited were tighter credit, labor shortages, tight lot supplies, rising prices for building materials, and “inaccurate” appraisals.

Some metro areas back to prerecession levels

Separately, according to the National Association of Home Builders/First American Leading Markets Index (LMI), 52 of the country’s approximately 350 metro areas are back to or above prerecessionary levels of housing economic activity.

The LMI, which replaces the Improving Markets Index, is designed to identify areas of the country that are approaching or exceeding their previous normal levels of activity, NAHB says. Metro areas get scores based on permit, price, and employment numbers. A more detailed explanation of how the LMI works can be found here.

Nationally, the index is at 0.85, meaning that the housing market is currently at 85% of its normal activity. Smaller metro areas are doing best, accounting for 43 of the top 50 markets.

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