The Los Angeles beachfront neighborhood of Venice may be one of the most in-demand areas in the nation—but it hasn’t gained a single housing unit in the last 15 years.Venice was ranked as the country’s toughest place to build new homes, according to an analysis by contractor website BuildZoom.com. In fact, the neighborhood had about 700 fewer housing units in 2015 than it did in 2000. Apartment development has come to a standstill there, an
Home builders are ramping up the pace of new-home construction in response to an ongoing shortage of homes for sale across the country.Housing starts nationwide jumped 8.3 percent in June to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.22 million units, the Commerce Department reported Wednesday. Single-family production zoomed to its second highest rate of this year, increasing 6.3 percent month-over-month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 849,0
Spending on repairs and home improvement continues to grow at a stable rate as homeowners feel more confident about starting projects as their home values increase.That said, an annual increase in remodeling expenditures may soften somewhat in the coming months, but will likely remain at or above 6 percent through the second quarter of 2018, according to the latest Leading Indicator of Remodeling Activity from Harvard University’s Joint Ce
Modular housing has been praised for its potential to help communities more quickly add inventories of homes. Portions of the home are built in a factory and then assembled on site to help speed up delivery times.A U.K.-based company called Ten Fold Engineering says it’s developed a series of modular housing structures that can be unfolded in less than 10 minutes without the need for builders, cranes, or foundations. The unit gets delivered
Competition is heating up among millennials and baby boomers for smaller, more affordable homes. But builders have been slow to meet demand. That may be showing signs of changing.Home sizes are beginning to shrink, which may also, in turn, help prices edge down some too.“We are starting to see [smaller] starter homes come back,” says Rick Palacios Jr., director of research at John Burns Real Estate Consulting.The uptick started slightly in mi
There needs to be a shift in government policy so that we can make it easier for builders to do what they do bestKey Takeaways Government regulations, land, low labor and material costs all contribute to the lack of new home completions.Housing markets all across the U.S. are suffering from serious shortages of homes for sale, and this isn’t expected to change in the foreseeable future.When I think about inventory levels and the fact that deman
By 2030, the nation will need about 4.6 million new apartments to meet demand and keep prices in check, according to the National Multifamily Housing Council. To reach that number, about 373,000 new units, on average, will be needed each year.The nation is getting closer to meeting the growing demands from renters. Apartment construction is at a 20-year high, according to data from RentCafe and Yardi Matrix.Apartment completions are expected to t
The availability of building materials, particularly framing lumber, is rising on the list of concerns among home builders, according to the latest National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index. Twenty-one percent of single-family builders reported a shortage of framing lumber.“It is certainly concerning that we have seen such a large jump in reported framing lumber shortages in a relatively short period of time,” say
The long-term trend of larger homes will persist in the building industry and will likely have big consequences on housing affordability, according to Robert Dietz, the chief economist of the National Association of Home Builders.“Rising regulatory costs, increasing labor and land costs, and a tighter financing environment encouraged builders to shift to the higher end of the market in greater numbers,” Dietz notes in a recent column at BUILD
Buyers eyeing newly constructed homes may need to brace for building delays and higher prices due to an ongoing labor shortage. About two-thirds of homebuilding contractors say they’re struggling to finish projects on time because of the labor shortage, according to a new survey sponsored by USG Corp. and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. More than one-third say they sometimes have to turn projects down.“Basically, they’re just making people wo
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