Roughly 56% of builders offered incentives to buyers in June, according to the National Association of Homebuilders, up from 54% in May. Since the NAHB began surveying builders about incentives in 1995, the percentage offering these kinds of deal sweeteners had never fallen below 50% until July 2022, when it hit 43%. Usage of incentives has been on the upswing since, although it's still nowhere near the historical high of 86% in December 2008.
Though builders have an easier time making these types of deals work, regular home sellers probably won't feel the need to offer similar deals since attractive listings are still getting multiple offers and selling quickly amid the current inventory shortage, Sheryl Palmer, the CEO of the national homebuilder Taylor Morrison, told me.
"Most importantly, we're just undersupplied," Palmer said."And that's been exacerbated by what people are calling the 'These advantages are starting to make homebuilders feel a little more cheery about their prospects. Sure, a quarter of builders told the NAHB last month that they had cut prices to boost sales — but that's down from 36% in November, the.
"People are having to turn more toward new construction," Cristian deRitis, the deputy chief economist for Moody's Analytics, told me in mid-May."Sometimes it's the only game in town."Experts I spoke with warned against getting too worked up over one month's numbers, particularly since the Census' estimates of housing starts are often revised after their release.
Even if buyers get some relief from new housing construction, builders are still a long way off from bridging the housing shortfall. At the end of 2020,