Building Market Intelligence

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Surveys Confirm Little Impact from Rising Rates

by John Burns February 22, 2018

  CNBC did a 95-second clip on rising mortgage rates, including an interesting survey from Redfin about what would happen if mortgage rates rose to 5%. Redfin’s survey of 4000 home buyers concluded that: 6% of buyers would not purchase …

The Barbell Is Crushing the Supply of Affordable Homes

by Adam Artunian February 14, 2018

If you need any further convincing that we need to build more lower-priced homes, take a look at resale supply. The supply of low-tier listings (defined by Zillow as listings priced in the bottom one-third of home values in the …

Home Sharing: 44 Million Empty Bedrooms Await

by Mikaela Sharp & John Burns February 13, 2018

Home sharing will gradually take a sizeable dent out of housing demand. Just like Uber matches car owners with passengers and Airbnb matches homeowners with short-term renters, new technology companies match homeowners with long-term renters. These sharing economy technologies will …

Rising Rates Should Have Minimal Impact on Housing

by Rick Palacios Jr February 9, 2018

Twitter: @RickPalaciosJr Mortgage rates have risen 1.0% or more ten times in the last 43 years, with little impact on home sales and prices when the economy was also strong. Here is the paper we shared with our clients a …

Six Building Product Design Trends

by Steve Basten February 7, 2018

At the International Builders’ Show, we identified six new home construction and repair/remodeling design trends. For additional detail and photo examples, click here. 1. Internet of Things (IoT) technologies open the door to whole-home connectivity. Amazon’s Alexa and other personal …

The Single-Story Advantage: It Might Be More than You Think

by Dean Wehrli February 2, 2018

Single-story homes are a hot commodity. However, as high land prices and scarce space continue to drive densities higher, the share of single-level floor plans is shrinking. With buyers fighting over a limited supply, we would expect single-story homes to …

Five Minutes at the Builders’ Show

by John Burns January 31, 2018

Adam Grubb of Professional Builder gave me five minutes to summarize our forecast. Click on video above to view 2018 Forecast We have the most bullish 2018 price and volume forecast of those we track, and we are increasing our …

A New Home Alternative to Your Hovel

by Dean Wehrli January 17, 2018

Coastal California home prices have skyrocketed, creating great opportunities for homeowners to cash out and move to a smaller, nicer home. Check out this news clip featuring Dean Wehrli on the trend toward surban™ living. . Click here to view video …

New Home Sales at the Top 50 Masterplans Set a New Record

by Jody Kahn & Devyn Bachman January 11, 2018

Home buyers love master-planned communities. More than 28,000 home buyers purchased homes in the top 50 master-planned communities last year. While new home sales grew 9% last year, masterplan sales grew 20%! All 50 communities sold at least 314 homes …

The DIY Recovery

by Todd Tomalak January 9, 2018

DIY has been out of favor this recovery, but the tide may be starting to turn to its advantage. Todd Tomalak discusses the long-term outlook for DIY products: Click here to watch video If you have any questions, please contact …