?EUR??,,????'??It?EUR??,,????'???s important to keep today?EUR??,,????'???s report in perspective,?EUR??,,????'?? said NAHB President Dave Wilson. ?EUR??,,????'??Many builders still have substantial backlogs of unfilled orders and will remain quite busy in coming months. But we?EUR??,,????'???re well aware that some slowing of demand is inevitable following the record-breaking sales activity that has prevailed for some time.?EUR??,,????'??

Derived from a monthly survey that NAHB has been conducting for approximately 20 years, the NAHB/Wells Fargo HMI gauges builder perceptions of current single-family home sales and sales expectations for the next six months as either ?EUR??,,????'??good,?EUR??,,????'?? ?EUR??,,????'??fair?EUR??,,????'?? or ?EUR??,,????'??poor.?EUR??,,????'?? The survey also asks builders to rate traffic of prospective buyers as either ?EUR??,,????'??high to very high,?EUR??,,????'?? ?EUR??,,????'??average?EUR??,,????'?? or ?EUR??,,????'??low to very low.?EUR??,,????'?? Scores for each component are then used to calculate a seasonally adjusted index where any number over 50 indicates that more builders view sales conditions as good than poor.

Each of the HMI?EUR??,,????'???s component indexes registered declines this time around. The index gauging current sales activity fell eight points to 66, while the index gauging sales expectations for the next six months dropped nine points to 64 and the index gauging traffic of prospective buyers fell five points to 46.

?EUR??,,????'??No huge drop is in the cards ?EUR??,,????'??? the sharp decline in the HMI probably overstates the actual degree of deterioration in the single-family market, and it?EUR??,,????'???s most likely that we?EUR??,,????'???re engaged in an orderly cooling process that will lead to somewhat lower home sales and production in the future,?EUR??,,????'?? NAHB Chief Economist David Seiders said. ?EUR??,,????'??We?EUR??,,????'???re looking for a 5 or 6 percent decline in home sales next year, compared to 2005.?EUR??,,????'??