Source: BIG BUILDER News
Publication date: June 18, 2007
The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index plunged to its lowest level in 16 years in June, reflecting an increasingly pessimistic view among builders that a turnaround is anywhere in sight.
“Builders continue to report serious impacts of tighter lending standards on current home sales as well as cancellations, and they continue to trim prices and offer a variety of non-price incentives to work down sizeable inventory positions,” said NAHB president Brian Catalde, a home builder from El Segundo, California.
But alas! we do like cowbirds and cuckoos, which lay their eggs in nests which other birds have built, and cheer no traveller with their chattering and unmusical notes. Shall we forever resign the pleasure of construction to the carpenter? What does architecture amount to in the experience of the mass of men?
–Thoreau’s Walden
Replies
there's an interesting development going in a couple miles from me.
2 bedroom houses. not big houses.
bobl Volo, non valeo
Baloney detecter WFR
"But when you're a kibbutzer and have no responsibility to decide the facts and apply the law, you can reach any conclusion you want because it doesn't matter." SHG
At the last Homebuilders Association meeting I talked with a salesman who has a contractor client that is putting in a subdivision of small lots, small houses and sold seven very quickly.
Nothing over 1200 sqr ft. Including one that was 1100 sqr ft with a 1200 sqr ft attached garage.
Less than a mile down the road from me there is a 98 acre developement, with a minimum building size of 2500 sqr ft. In three years not a single home has yet been built.
Bowz
>>a 98 acre developement, with a minimum building size of 2500 sqr ft. In three years not a single home has yet been built
That sounds more like a planning or marketing fiasco than an economic phenomenon. Or maybe the lots are too pricey?
Yes that could be. It is a development put in by one of the area's large excavating contractors. They have done a number of them within 50 miles of here, so it wasn't put in by a first time idiot. Pricey lots could be it too, but my gut feeling is that people are scared to be the first to build in a new developement when there are other developements struggling too, and the existing stuff is not moving real quickly.
There is another developement of large houses about 2 miles away with some lakefront lots. 1st phase went in about 8 years ago and sold real well. 2nd phase went in about 3 yrs ago and I would guess less than 1/4 of the lots are sold and built on.
I think the planning fiasco was to think that large houses on big lots are going to keep getting snapped up. But I've been wrong before: Just ask my wife!
Bowz