Latest news with #NationalAssociationofHomeBuilders
Yahoo
22 minutes ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Texas cities dominate rankings for new home construction, report shows
The Brief Several Texas cities lead the nation in new home construction, with Houston ranking first and Dallas second in a new report. In early 2025, Houston issued over 11,000 permits and Dallas nearly 10,000, while San Antonio and Austin also made the top 10. This Texas-led construction boom aims to address a national housing deficit. DALLAS - Several of the top cities in the country for new home construction are right here in Texas, according to a new report. The report from ConsumerAffairs looked at where the most homes are being built in cities across the nation. By the numbers In January and February of this year, Dallas saw 9,811 new building permits issued. Only Houston issued more. 741 new homes were sold during the first two months of the year. Dallas did have the highest prices for newly-constructed homes of the major Texas cities. The average new home cost about $450,000. By the numbers In the first two months of 2025, more than 11,047 new building permits were issued in Houston. That was the most of the 150 U.S. cities included in the report. Houston also topped the list of the most new-construction homes sold with 1,314. The report cites Houston as being the only major metro area in the country without zoning laws. While Houston led the way, several other Texas cities made the list for new-home construction. Dallas (2), San Antonio (8) and Austin (9) also landed in the top 10. Of the top 10, only New York was outside the Sun Belt. Dig deeper The report says the average cost of a new-construction home in the United States is almost $485,000. The National Association of Home Builders believes the U.S. is facing a structural housing deficit and that at least 1.5 million units need to be built to balance the housing market. "What we have is a supply problem," said John Hunt, chief analyst and principal at MarketNsight, a housing analytics firm. "The more we can build, the less upward pressure there is on price … (and) the more folks can afford a home." Houston, Texas Dallas, Texas Phoenix, Arizona Atlanta, Georgia New York, New York Charlotte, North Carolina Orlando, Florida San Antonio, Texas Austin, Texas Tampa Bay, Florida The Source Information comes from the ConsumerAffairs Research Team analyzed data on new building permits and new-construction home sales in January and February. Building permit data comes from the U.S. Census Bureau. New-construction home sales data came from Zillow.
Yahoo
3 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
How Trump's Tariffs and Immigration Policies Could Make Housing Even More Expensive
President Donald Trump owes his second electoral victory, in no small part, to voter frustration over the rising cost of living. Over the course of Joe Biden's presidency, the price of a typical American house increased by nearly 40 percent, and rents followed a similar trajectory. As of 2024, approximately 771,480 Americans lack reliable shelter—at once a new high and a new low. All of these issues are most acute in states governed by Biden's fellow Democrats. In California, the median home price is now more than 10 times the median household income. Economists generally view three to five as a healthy ratio. Polling data suggest that many key voting blocs in the 2024 presidential election were primarily motivated by the rising cost of living and by out-of-control housing costs in particular. For all the network news preoccupation with transgender athletes and campus protests, it was mortgages and rents—the single largest line items in a typical household's budget—that moved voters to toss out incumbents. On April 2, after months of empty threats and false starts, the administration finally launched its global trade war, including a 25 percent tariff on various goods from Canada and Mexico. But Canadian softwood lumber and Mexican gypsum used for drywall—the (literal) pillars of a typical American single-family home—would be exempt. The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) was quick to celebrate it as a win: Canada accounts for 85 percent of all U.S. lumber imports. If the tariffs had taken effect as planned, the per-unit cost of a home might have increased by as much as $29,000. In a sector characterized by thin margins, that would have meant a lot of idle construction sites. And yet the partial rollback will offer only a temporary reprieve. Tariffs already in effect will increase the cost of a new home by $10,900 on average, according to an April 2025 estimate by the NAHB—an increase of $1,700 over its March estimate. This is on top of a 41.6 percent increase in building materials since 2020, brought on by pandemic-related supply chain disruptions. Those cost increases could hit renters hardest. After a decade of underbuilding in the wake of the 2008 financial crisis, America is short roughly 5 million homes—most of them apartments. Perhaps the most robust finding in urban economics is that when vacancy rates increase, rents fall. But driving up vacancy rates requires cities to build more housing. Thanks to the YIMBY ("yes in my backyard") movement, a handful of cities—including Austin and Minneapolis—have recently had building booms that have brought prices back down. But those cities have been the exception. Meanwhile, a new wave of tariffs is about to make it a lot more expensive to build. On February 11, the administration imposed a 25 percent tariff on steel and aluminum—much of it imported from allies such as Brazil and Germany. On February 25, the administration announced an investigation into copper imports, presumably with future tariffs in the works. Depending on their country of origin, other key inputs like iron and cement are also now subject to steep tariffs. Even if you can get new housing built, the appliances needed to make all these new homes livable could soon cost hundreds of dollars more. Not only are microwaves, refrigerators, and air conditioners now more expensive to import, but tariffs on key inputs mean they are also more expensive to produce domestically. Uncertainty around tariffs has put many construction projects on pause, sending homebuilder stocks plummeting. Many small, local developers are exiting the market altogether. Following in the mold of autarkic Cuba—where international trade is strictly limited and medical doctors drive taxis for a living—your next Uber driver could very well be an out-of-work former developer. Never mind that the typical American city desperately needs them to build. If tariffs weren't bad enough, the administration's program of mass deportations could kick the housing crisis into overdrive. As things stand, the construction industry is already short 250,000 workers. This is partly a legacy of Trump's first term, in which an immigration clampdown suppressed what might have been an overdue housing construction boom. Even today, approximately 30 percent of construction workers are immigrants, many of them undocumented. In California, which is already a basket case on housing affordability, immigrants make up 41 percent of all construction labor. In Texas—one of the few bright spots for housing affordability in recent years, thanks to an ongoing construction boom—nearly 60 percent of all immigrant construction workers are undocumented. If 2024 was any indication, expecting voters to put up with all this in 2026 is a risky gamble. On some level, the Trump administration must appreciate that this is an existential threat. And yet its current proposals are out of sync with the scale of the housing crisis: Releasing more federally owned lands for housing development remains the only proposal the administration has seriously offered up to address the housing shortage. It's a fine enough idea if properly designed. But it would, at best, provide only modest relief to a handful of Western cities. Worse yet, the administration seems to have regressed to the implicitly regulatory "protect the suburbs" rhetoric that so failed Trump in the 2020 election. In February, Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) chief Scott Turner announced that he would be scrapping the Affirmatively Furthering Fair Housing (AFFH) rule in order to "cut red tape" and "advance market-driven development." Except the rule was essentially just a reporting exercise that required local governments to disclose—and ideally remove—local red tape standing in the way of housing. In 2018, then–HUD Secretary Ben Carson embraced the AFFH rule as a way of nudging cities to remove regulatory barriers to housing production, as part of his brief flirtation with YIMBYism. In a move that would make Orwell blush, Carson joined Trump in a Wall Street Journal op-ed two years later announcing that they would "protect America's suburbs" and scrap the rule if reelected. Trump lost that election. It's all a very strange state of affairs—a developer in chief with evidently little interest in getting America building again. It didn't need to be this way. Over the course of the first Trump administration, housing production recovered at a steady clip, with a muted increase in housing costs as a result. The administration's deregulating zeal could have been focused on unnecessary federal mandates that increase costs. Instead, the United States is poised to experience a run-up in housing prices through 2028 that could make the pandemic-era increases like a minor blip. So what could the federal government do? From a constitutional perspective, not much. The bulk of the blame for America's housing crisis lies with local governments that maintain onerous zoning regulations and unpredictable permitting processes—and the state governments that control them. The federal government has little role to play in zoning, even if it once did a lot of the heavy lifting to promote it. But that isn't to imply there is nothing the federal government could do. In recent years, the idea of tying federal dollars to local deregulation has gained acceptance within the Beltway. Bills with unsubtle names like the "Build More Housing Near Transit Act" or the "Yes In My Backyard Act" would variously condition money for transit or other public facilities on local jurisdictions cutting back on red tape. At the same time, the federal government could turn up the tax pressure. If homeowners in cities with high costs and low production were suddenly ineligible for benefits like the mortgage interest deduction or the state and local tax credit, it would transform the local politics of housing. Homeowners who might otherwise be fully bought into government constraints on housing production could flip their script. More likely, however, the onus will fall on state and local legislators to pull out all the stops on housing production. State and local elected officials can't control tariffs or immigration policy. But they can control "make or break" factors such as zoning regulations, permitting timelines, and impact fees. According to a recent RAND study, variations in these policies explain why it's nearly twice as expensive to build housing in California as in Texas. At least some state legislators are rising to the occasion. In recent months, states as diverse as Republican-supermajority Montana and Democratic-supermajority Washington have moved forward legislation restricting the right of local governments to block housing. Even California is starting to see the light. All these bills will help to get more housing built, no matter what's happening at the federal level. The Trump administration had better hope those state-level efforts are successful—and scrap the trade and immigration policies that could plunge America into another housing crisis. The post How Trump's Tariffs and Immigration Policies Could Make Housing Even More Expensive appeared first on
Yahoo
6 days ago
- Business
- Yahoo
Throwback Thursday — Celebrating 150 Years of the Messenger-Inquirer: Thompson spent 14 years as legislator while balancing family business
Tommy Thompson spent 14 years trying to balance his family's homebuilding business while serving as the state representative for the 14th House District. Thompson, an Owensboro Democrat, was first elected to the seat in 2002. It was the moment that his family's business — Thompson Homes — had been preparing him for. Thompson, 76, said his father, William 'Bill' Thompson, got involved in former governor and U.S. Sen. Wendell Ford's election campaigns. 'I kind of got a little bit of interest and inertia from that,' Thompson said. So much so that Thompson first ran for public office against Louis Johnson in 1977 for state representative of the 13th District — a race that Thompson would lose. 'I was young and probably a little naive,' Thompson said. '…Louis was a great guy and well seated here in the community. I lost that race but I learned a lot.' But it would be Thompson's involvement with the National Association of Home Builders that would provide him with valuable future political insight. By being in the homebuilding trade, Thompson said understanding the role local, state and federal governments played was essential. 'It really was involved in politics because housing, other than probably narcotics, is the most heavily regulated industry in the country,' he said. 'At all levels, there are regulations to deal with and policies that impact the ability to produce housing.' Thompson was part of the National Association of Home Builders board for five years, becoming its president in 1994. Thompson described it as 'a great time' as it allowed him to engage with national leaders such as the Federal Reserve chairman, members of Congress and U.S. presidents. 'I got to testify before Congress a number of times on housing issues,' Thompson said. '…There were five years there that I was in Washington a lot, traveled around the country and really around the world — I got to go to a number of foreign countries representing housing.' That experience with the National Association of Home Builders further ignited his fervor to run again for state office. 'I said to myself, 'Well, if you really want to affect change, you probably need to be on the inside of the arena instead of the outside,' Thompson said. In 2002, Thompson defeated Republican Ray Askins for the 14th District House seat, representing Ohio County and 17 precincts in eastern Daviess County. Although it was the long-awaited political victory for Thompson, he then had the challenge of balancing his business with having the responsibility of being a public servant. '…Something has to … suffer and so my business did because I couldn't be here day-to-day like I wanted to be,' said Thompson, who was the company's president then. 'Your family suffers because you're not there to attend ballgames, help be a dad, help Mom do the honey-do things.' Thompson would serve the 14th House District seven terms before being defeated in 2016 by Matt Castlen. According to Thompson, he could tell the political climate was changing both at state and national levels as Donald Trump entered the political fray. 'I really enjoyed most of my tenure in the legislature but in the last (few) years it became very partisan,' he said. '…People started being intractable around a particular policy or a particular party issue, so there was less opportunity to compromise, which was disappointing.' Now nearly 10 years later, Thompson said he's content on watching the legislature from the sidelines. 'I missed it initially just because it was such a big part of my life for a long time,' Thompson said. 'But I haven't missed the partisanship and it's become more so that way as I talk to some of my colleagues who are still up there.' After losing the race, Thompson returned his full focus back to the company that his father started 77 years ago. His son, Nick Thompson, now runs the day-to-day operations as president and Thompson has become the CEO. '(Nick's) been a real help, coming in here and lending his talents, commitment to the company and giving me a little flexibility,' said Thompson, who still goes into their Frederica Street office every day. '…I don't plan on retiring anytime soon.' Locally, the newest Thompson Home neighborhoods include Fiddlesticks off J.R. Miller Boulevard, Keeneland Trace off Carter Road and Saddle Pointe off Thurston Dermont Road. Thompson said the company has also expanded into southern Indiana, building homes in Newburgh and Evansville. '…My dad started our company back in 1948 and then I came in here,' Thompson said. '…And now that my son has come in, he's the third generation, so it's important to continue that legacy and hopefully continue that foundation that we started. …I hopefully took it to a little different level and my son will hopefully take it to the next level.'
CNBC
21-05-2025
- Business
- CNBC
How lumber duties could worsen home affordability in the U.S.
Volatile lumber prices are once again rattling the U.S. housing market, squeezing builders and threatening to exacerbate an already dire affordability crisis. Softwood lumber prices in April surged 23% year-over-year, while futures rose sharply in early 2025 amid fears of increased U.S. duties and widespread sawmill closures across North America, according to the National Association of Home Builders. This has weighed heavily on major homebuilders such as Lennar, D.R. Horton and Toll Brothers, which have all seen their stocks slump this spring. Though lumber avoided inclusion in the latest round of tariffs, the Trump administration has signaled growing interest in tightening trade restrictions. In March, the White House issued an executive order directing the Commerce Department to investigate the national security implications of lumber imports and boost domestic production. The U.S. currently imposes a 14.5% duty on Canadian lumber, and Canada accounts for about 85% of all U.S. softwood lumber imports, representing almost a quarter of U.S. supply, according to NAHB. That tariff rate could jump to 34.5% later this year following a regulatory review by the Department of Commerce, further disrupting a sector already reeling from material costs and labor shortages. "The unpredictability of lumber prices adds serious complexity to planning and budgeting," said Steve Martinez, president of Idaho-based Tradewinds General Contracting. His business builds high-end multifamily homes, where wood frames are critical, accounting for up to 18% of construction costs, according to HomeGuide. Beyond homebuilding, higher lumber costs are hitting renovations, fencing and interiors. The United States Forest Products annual market review and prospects found that U.S. lumber production inched up to 64 million cubic meters in 2023, up nearly 1% from the year prior. But demand continues to outpace supply. Environmental regulations, aging forests and labor constraints compound the challenge. Nearly 100 million U.S. households can't afford a median-priced home, which now averages $460,000, according to NAHB. As affordability worsens, experts warn that higher tariffs and ongoing supply instability could stall new development for years. The Department of Commerce is expected to reach a final decision on Canadian lumber duties by August. Watch the video to find out more about the trade tension between the U.S. and Canada and what's behind the rise in lumber prices.
Newsweek
20-05-2025
- Business
- Newsweek
US Housing Market Already Being Hit By Trump Tariffs
Based on facts, either observed and verified firsthand by the reporter, or reported and verified from knowledgeable sources. Newsweek AI is in beta. Translations may contain inaccuracies—please refer to the original content. The number of new single-family homes in the U.S. on which construction has commenced dropped by 12 percent in April compared to a year ago, according to new data from the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). The decrease was a result of economic uncertainty over the potential impact of President Donald Trump's tariffs, the growing cost of building materials, and historically high mortgage rates, the NAHB said. Last month's decrease in single-family starts — a measure of builders' willingness to spend resources on new housing construction projects — comes after a similar fall in March. Newsweek contacted NAHB for comment on Tuesday outside of regular working hours. A construction worker building a new home in a neighborhood destroyed by the Palisades Fire in California earlier this month. A construction worker building a new home in a neighborhood destroyed by the Palisades Fire in California earlier this It Matters The number of permits to build new single-family units in the U.S. plummeted after the recession of 2007-2009 and never completely recovered, leaving the country with a severe shortage of homes compared to the growing demand. This contributed substantially to the current housing affordability crisis. While a growing number of new construction projects have been approved over the past few years, the country is still far from closing the gap between supply and demand. Builders have also warned that Trump's sweeping tariffs, impacting building materials such as softwood timber and lumber, will increase costs and potentially discourage new projects. What To Know Trump's tariffs included a 10 percent baseline levy on most U.S. trading partners and rates up to 50 percent on some nations. Exemptions for Canadian lumber and Mexican gypsum helped buffer immediate price hikes, but the NAHB estimates that tariffs have still added about $9,200 to the cost of building an average new home. Building material prices were already on the rise before the tariffs, and are now up 34 percent since December 2020. About 60 percent of U.S. builders reported in April that suppliers had already raised or planned to raise material prices in response to the tariffs, according to a survey conducted by NAHB last month. These higher costs are reflected in builders' shrinking confidence in starting new construction projects. Overall housing starts — the number of new home projects builders would begin if development kept this pace for the next 12 months — increased by 1.6 percent in April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.36 million units, according to data from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development and the U.S. Census Bureau. However, the NAHB noted that single-family home starts were down 2.1 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 927,000, and down 12 percent from a year earlier. Meanwhile, multi-family home starts were up 10.7 percent to an annualized rate of 434,000, as the construction of apartment buildings and condos picks up. Overall permits decreased 4.7 percent to a 1.41-million-unit annualized rate in April, with single-family permits falling by 5.1 percent to a 922,000-unit rate, down by 6.2 percent compared to April 2024. The drop in the number of single-family starts in April follows a similar decrease in March, when they were down by 14.2 percent. Single-family homes represent the majority of housing units on the U.S. market. In 2023, 85 million out of the total 133 million occupied units in the country were single-family homes, according to data from Statista. What People Are Saying Buddy Hughes, NAHB chairman and a home builder and developer from Lexington, North Carolina, said in a press release: "The decline in single-family housing starts in April mirrors builder sentiment, as elevated interest rates, uncertainty on the tariff front and rising construction costs are exacerbating housing affordability challenges. In turn, this is making it more difficult for builders to deliver entry-level housing at a price point that is accessible to home buyers." Danushka Nanayakkara-Skillington, NAHB's assistant vice president for forecasting and analysis, said: "Economic uncertainty, especially around interest rates and inflation, continues to impact both builder financing costs and buyers' ability to qualify. However, recent developments on the tariff front concerning the United Kingdom and China along with major tax legislation advancing in Congress should provide a boost to housing demand and positive momentum for the economy." Associated Builders and Contractors' chief economist Anirban Basu told Newsweek previously: "If these tariffs remain in place, materials prices will likely continue to rise. One exception would be if there is a sharp economic downturn, in which case the effect of the tariffs could be countervailed by the sizable decrease in demand for certain commodities." What Happens Next Last month, the number of single-family homes under construction stood at 630,000, while the number of multi-family units being built was 788,000. The U.S. needs 3.8 million more units to fix the current housing affordability gap, according to an estimate by — but it would take 7.5 years to build that many homes at the current pace of construction.
