Some interesting comments from today's Fed Beige Book on both housing (investors, lot shortages, market normalizing) & labor market tightness (namely continued wage spike).
Quick primer on US housing, with a focus on single-family rental ownership nationally and locally.
To start, there are 146 million housing units in the US. Follow the charts left to right and you eventually get to 45 million rentals, 14 million of which are single-family.
Of those 14 million single-family rental homes across the country, here's how ownership by investor portfolio size looks.
Mom-and-pop investors own the majority of homes (80%), while institutions account for just 3% of single-family rental ownership nationally.
There are a handful of housing markets where institutions do own 10%+ of all single-family rental homes. Here's a summary for 20 of the more popular investor markets we monitor.
Home builder construction costs finally cooling. Market commentary from our December survey of builders signals relief on the horizon...
#Dallas builder: “Hard costs continue to dip on average $3K-$5K per month. We are pushing back hard to lower our average labor and material costs. They must come down to reflect lower home selling prices.”
#Denver builder: “Almost all the home builders I am talking to are working on cost reductions. They range from -5% to -8% per plan.”
Housing's had a wild up and down ride in 2022. Looking back at our report headlines, here’s how the year played out (I chose one per month to show market shifting)…
January 19th, 2022: “Prepare for Rising Rates”
February 21st, 2022: “Housing Strength Persists Despite 4% Mortgage Rates”
C-suite commentary on yesterday’s Tricon Residential earnings call alluded to single-family rental ‘shadow supply’ thesis...
“Starting to see return to normal seasonality in new lease trade-outs and moderation in overall level of rent growth.”
“One of the factors at play could be a higher supply of rental homes that we’re seeing in our markets, which might be caused by would-be home sellers opting to rent out their homes in light of challenging mortgage environment.”
Home builder commentary from our survey this month was about as negative as I've seen to date. Here's some of the market color that jumped out...
#OklahomaCity builder: "Biggest challenge is your customers who just closed their home and see you drop prices by $30,000."
#Jacksonville builder: "Buying land at the top of the market and having to pull every incentive lever to sell is not a recipe for success. We'll cut starts ~60% to 70% in 2023."
I wrote this piece for @FortuneMagazine yesterday, hoping to shed light on two items possibly weighing down home purchase activity that don’t get all that much attention. The main points were as follows… fortune.com/2022/09/09/spe…
1) A boatload of existing homeowners are locked in and in love with their sub-5% mortgage rate (many sub-3%), most of which tell us they won't purchase again if mortgage rates stay close to today's levels.
2) Existing homeowners also account for about half of all home purchases (almost all of them use a mortgage), so the implied hit to potential home sales is meaningful near-term.