Month: October 2017

October 27, 2017

2018 Housing Market Projections

The ProDealer Summit in Phoenix last week was highlighted by Ivy Zelman’s presentation. Ivy is the founder of Zelman and Associates who is focused on US housing market analysis. Ivy, known as “Poison Ivy” by her bosses at Credit Suisse when in 2006 she called the housing bubble in the midst of the robust market we thought would never end. She followed up to call the 2012 bottom, again more accurately and ahead of her peers.

Following are my notes from her presentation:

Age in place: Retired people are staying in their single-family homes past 80 years of age, limiting the supply of homes for millennials. Remodeling is driven by debt/equity ratio in housing. Currently 30% of single family homes have no debt, 5% have greater than 20% equity, 4% are underwater. Combined with the single family home average age of 41 yrs., Ivy is “Bullish in Remodeling”. People have money to spend and homes need the upgrading.

Construction labor market is tight, but not getting worse having leveled.

Land development is at the most active point since the downturn with developers profiting from subdividing C grade raw land. A reflection of the high demand.

The increased flexibility and support from the banking industry providing home mortgage loans is a story not getting out. FHA loans for 3.5% down for borrowers with 620 FICA scores are widely available.

Home mortgage interest tax deduction changes will be limited to homes over $500,000 and home owners with an annual income over $100,000 (which only make up 14% of home owners). Second homes will likely lose the tax deduction. Overall, Ivy believes it will have little if any impact on the housing market.

Demand: Millennials are getting married, having babies and wanting space to grow their families. Surging demand beyond obstacles, new homes are in broadly short supply.

Ivy is projecting housing starts to increase 12% in 2018 and 10% in 2019. As of today, the top 10 publicly traded production builder stock prices are up on average 82% in the past 52 weeks. Wall Street seems to agree with Ivy’s calculations.

When the question was asked whether increasing prices of softwood and panels will be an obstacle, her comment was along the lines of “don’t hesitate to increase your prices they need your materials.” National Production Builder profit margins are 19-22%, the market demand can handle the increase in material expense.

The gasp from the crowd was hard to miss.

Published every other week by Ivy and her team, The Z Report is rooted in proprietary research and opinions and void of advertisements, focusing exclusively on rich content for executives and business leaders that removes all the noise of volatile and unreliable macro data. We encourage you to visit The Z Report webpage to learn more and sign up for a free trial subscription.