Dive Brief:

• The National Association of Home Builders has a new standard for measuring economic recovery in metro housing markets, its National Association of Home Builders/First American Leading Markets Index (LMI).
• The new index is based on building permits, housing prices and employment in each metro area.
• Single-family home-building permit and house prices use 2000-2003 is the "normal" period, while employment is based on 2007.

Dive Insight:

In announcing that 52 of the 381 metro areas in the United States are back to pre-recession norms for the three measurements or have gone above them, NAHB is shifting its focus from trying to recover to having recovered. The previous index that it announced every month, the Improving Markets Index, was more of a chronicle of where things were getting better or, sometimes, had stopped being better as metros fell off the list.