25% of new homes sold for under $300K in November, up from 13% in October. This is the highest % of homebuilder entry-level sales since 2021 (chart below is 3-month moving average).

The jump in sales at lower price tiers supports a few themes playing out in housing today... 1. Recent conversations across the single-family rental (SFR) and build-to-rent (BTR) sectors, signaling homebuilders are open to moving entry-level unsold inventory at prices they weren’t willing to consider earlier in the year (Sunbelt in particular). Many production homebuilders have these SFR and BTR groups on speed dial for pockets of volatility like we’re currently seeing.

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.

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.”

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”

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.”

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."

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.

August home builder sentiment and sales/prices/starts survey results are in. Top themes: 1) Home price cuts along with other incentives are helping sales (for now). 2) Supply chain is healing as demand drops and builders quickly slow housing starts. Market commentary to follow… #Austin builder: “A lot of spec inventory to work through. August was a very poor month for sales across the board. Cancellations spiked from July and buyers showed no sense of urgency.”

Home price trends across 20 top housing markets. Pace of price increases moderating (left chart), which you can see in our underlying home price index flattening out or actually falling in a few markets (right chart). Start it off with #Atlanta. #Austin home prices

Apartment transaction market appears to be in price discovery phase. Bid/ask wider as highly leveraged buyers take a breather. Asset values down ~5% to 15% and cap rates up ~50 to 100 basis points based on earnings commentary last week... Mid-America: “~40 bps change in cap rates last 2 to 3 months. Majority of fallout related to higher levered buyers pulling back & buyers with shorter-term time horizons pulling out of market. Assets not well located or inherent issue could see [cap rates off 75 to 100 bps].”

Home builder market share dynamics are worth paying attention to as housing demand softens. Couple builders known for resetting the market on price are now lion’s share in many geographies, not just Tampa (shown below). National home builder market share concentration at the top has grown quite a bit in recent years.

June home builder sentiment and survey results are in. Top themes: 1) A lot more new home buyers cancelling. 2) Price cuts becoming fairly common. 3) Drop in demand finally cooling construction cost pressures (builder layoffs also happening). Market commentary to follow… #Atlanta builder: “Someone turned out the lights on our sales in June!”

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.”

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.

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.”

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.”

A few gems from today's Fed Beige Book on crazy tight job market. Employers pulling out all the stops, even "no-meeting Wednesdays" to attract people. "Extreme new-worker turnover"

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.”

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.”

Some interesting comments from today's Fed Beige Book on both housing (investors, lot shortages, market normalizing) & labor market tightness (namely continued wage spike). #Atlanta Fed housing commentary on investors

Monthly pulse of resale housing market still rapid according to 4,500 agents we just surveyed. Top 3 themes: 1) Bit of market normalizing. 2) Skittish sellers fearing nowhere to move. 3) End of travel ban boosting international buyers. Commentary across the country to follow… #Houston resale agent: “A lot of people are not listing because they don't know where they are going next. Seems that many people listed too high even for a sellers' market, so I am seeing more price reductions now than earlier in the year.”