National Association of Home Builders Archives

Homebuilder Headaches

by Brandon Bidwell

The National Association of Home Builders recently surveyed their members to ask them about the challenges they currently face and the challenges they expect to face.

Far and away, the biggest headache for homebuilders right now is the rising cost of building materials.

96% of the survey respondents cited this as a significant problem they faced in 2020 and 89% believe it will be a significant problem this year.

It turns out that builders are not only concerned about building material costs, but also the availability of those materials.

78% said availability was a significant problem last year and 80% said that it will be a significant problem in 2021.

Due to increasing materials costs, we notice builders locally having to raise their base prices significantly in order to keep up with rising costs.

Housing Affordability Research

by Brandon Bidwell

Housing affordability is a hot topic especially after the strong price appreciation that has occurred in our market over the last 7 years.

Here’s some interesting research on affordability…

Each quarter the National Association of Home Builders measures affordability in hundreds of markets across the Country.

Their method is to count the number of homes in a market that could be purchased with that particular market’s median income.

For example, San Francisco is the least-affordable market where only 8.4% of the homes could be purchased with their median income.

The most-affordable is Monroe, Michigan where 95.3% of the homes could be purchased with their median income.

Guess where all of the 10 least-affordable markets are. California!

Guess where almost all of the 10 most-affordable markets are. The rust belt (cities in Michigan, Ohio, upstate New York, etc.)

The U.S. average is 63.6%.

Metro Denver comes in at 55.3% and Northern Colorado at 54.5%.

So, roughly half of the homes in our market could be purchased with our local median income.