May homebuilder survey results published last week. Top themes: 1) Builder metrics quickly deteriorating across the board. 2) Price cuts on standing ‘speculative’ inventory accelerating. 3) Buyer incentives are back. Market commentary to follow…
#Austin builder: “Some parts of town where finished homes are now taking a month to sell versus hours. Market is definitely correcting. Incentives are back and seeing some builders cutting prices on inventory.”
#Baltimore builder: “Customers now mentioning potential reduction in prices and/or increase in incentives.”
#Bend builder: “Market drastically changed in last month. Traffic slowed significantly. Sellers of both new and used homes are dropping prices.”
#Birmingham builder: “Steep decline in sales over past 2 weeks.”
#Boston builder: “Recently started seeing drop off in buyers wanting to get on interest list. A release of 4 new homes this past weekend may be the first one in quite some time that is not fully sold out from buyers on our waiting list.”
#Charlotte builder: “Still not meeting [sales] goal and seeing less traffic, with people taking longer to make decisions. Some close-out communities are not getting traffic.”
#Columbus builder: “May traffic down 25% from April and don’t expect June to compare well to May.”
#Dallas builder: “Lower priced, outlying communities have slowed. Interest lists are nearly half of what they were.”
#Denver builder: “Higher rates are definitely bringing a chill to the market.”
#Greenville builder: “Lowest traffic in many months.”
#Harrisburg builder: “Market is soft, inventory is building. Missed May projected sales by 50%.”
#Houston builder: “Home prices hit a ceiling and incentives are starting to show up.”
#Jacksonville builder: “Released 4 inventory homes in a HOT community and only sold 1 (first time haven’t sold them in under 48 hours in more than a year)."
#LosAngeles builder: “Seeing more cancellations due to payment shock for those in backlog that didn't lock rates.”
#Nashville builder: “Most builders are cutting speculative housing starts by 15%.”
#Philadelphia builder: “Forced to reduce some pricing and become more competitive.”
#Phoenix builder: “As interest rates rise and pricing continues to escalate, there’s no way we can sustain the type of sales rates we are used to.”
#Portland builder: “Incentives are back in the market.”
#RiversideSanBernardino builder: “Pricing in this market will correct by 5-10%. If this administration lets the housing market slide because of inflation, we’ll probably take some more hits to pricing.”
#SanAntonio builder: “Builders are requiring higher earnest money deposits. Rates are impacting buyers due to debt-to-income ratios.”
#Tampa builder: “Website and phone traffic slowed dramatically in the past 45-60 days. Longer-term pause in buyer traffic would cause alarm for our 2023/2024 business plans.” THE END
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Seeing ripple effects of rising rates reverberate across housing market. Starts with entry-level buyers (already slowing).
Move-up buyer also showing signs of slowing. Home equity rich helps offset 5%+ mortgage rate shock, but need a buyer to sell/move-up in market (often an entry-level buyer), that's now pulling back.
Luxury, second home, and vacation buyers also pulling back. Discretionary purchase and sensitive to overall investment portfolio/broader economic shifts (not great currently).
April homebuilder survey results are here. Top themes: 1) Demand is slowing, namely entry-level due to payment shock. 2) Investors are pulling back. 3) Ripple effect of rising rates starting to hit move-up market. Market commentary to follow…
#Dallas builder: “Interest lists are shrinking or buyers are truly pausing.”
#Houston builder: “Many first-time buyers simply no longer qualify with the increase in interest rates, as their debt-to-income ratio gets out of whack.”
Homebuilder survey results are in for February. Top themes: 1) Record high new home price increases at +20% YOY nationally. 2) Record low builder finished inventory. 3) Demand still off the charts & quality of home buyer prospect lists still solid. Market commentary to follow…
#Charlotte builder: “Restricting sales in all communities. Several communities with VIP lists over 1,000 and one of those communities only has 51 homes. Increasing mortgage rates haven’t slowed buyers down at all.”
#Charlotte builder: “HELP WANTED signs have driven direct construction costs up +20%. Keeping your employees from jumping ship to work for another builder costs 25% more.”
Home builder survey results are in for full month of December. Top themes: 1) Still a ton of demand for new homes. 2) Rampant construction material & labor shortages. 3) Bit of chatter on possible margin compression several quarters ahead. Market commentary to follow…
#Atlanta builder: “Have virtually no available inventory & huge backlog of 1,000+ units going in to 2022. Still metering sales in most communities, where the demand of waiting buyers still outnumbers our supply.”
#LasVegas builder: “Busiest orders for December I can remember in a long time.”
We’ve been asking building product dealers about supply bottlenecks for several months. Seems like status quo holding for now (not getting better, but also not getting worse). Labor & logistics remain the biggest concerns, see survey commentary to follow…
“All beam products, glass faced gypsum products, windows, & interior trim products continue to tighten.”
“Lumber & engineered wood supply appears to be improving but steel supply remains a concern.”