New home sales are rising, but builders are tapping the brakes as the trade war and broader economic uncertainty grip the industry.
Sales of new homes rose 7.4% from February to March, according to federal data released Wednesday, as buyers took advantage of somewhat lower mortgage rates and a wider supply of properties to choose from. But rates have already begun inching back up, and homebuilders are bracing for a slowdown.
Federal figures showed housing starts plunged more than 11% from February to March. Developers’ six-month sales expectations slipped 4 percentage points from March to April, the National Association of Home Builders reported separately last week.
“You’re being very selective of what you’re working on right now with all the uncertainty in the marketplace,” said John Kirk, founder of the Lightpath Company, a multifamily home developer in New Braunfels, Texas.
Waiting and seeing is very bad for construction.
Anirban Basu, chief economist, Associated Builders and Contractors
The homebuilding industry isn’t particularly vulnerable to President Donald Trump’s tariffs, but his mercurial trade policies are affecting its business nonetheless.
Only 7% of materials used in new residential construction are imported, the NAHB estimates. Yet contractors and developers are already seeing higher materials costs and supply chain disruptions. With many vendors unable to guarantee price levels for the months ahead, some builders fear they can’t rely on current cost estimates, making it harder to move projects beyond the planning phase. Consumers’ growing reluctance to pounce on properties is adding to the strain, leaving more homes to pile up on the market.
“The financial rationale to move forward with projects is no longer penciling out,” said Anirban Basu, chief economist of the Associated Builders and Contractors trade group. “Waiting and seeing is very bad for construction,” he said, adding that he expects construction data to reveal a deeper slowdown by summer.
D.R. Horton, a major national homebuilder, lowered its outlook for the year last week but reassured investors that it’s “well-positioned” to handle cost impacts from the trade war. Some smaller developers, meanwhile, warn they don’t have much wiggle room.
“Since January, it seems like every month I’ve been getting letters from suppliers making me aware that material costs are going up,” said Joshua Correa, owner of Divinio Homes, a residential building firm in Dallas.
Correa said he recently asked his lender for extended financing in case project costs rise unexpectedly or his properties sit on the market longer than usual, adding that some newly built homes already do. He also said he has been fielding unusually pointed questions lately about trade impacts on the housing market, like “Where does the wood flooring come from — which country? Will it be affected by tariffs?”
Every month I’ve been getting letters from suppliers making me aware that material costs are going up.
Joshua Correa, owner of Divinio Homes, Dallas
“It’s a psychological impact on our buyers, our investors,” Correa said. “It’s just too much decision-making.”
Some housing market pressures are easing. The NBC News Home Buyer Index — which measures the relative ease of finding and purchasing a home in more than 1,000 counties nationwide — shows difficulty levels declining in March, as competition and supply constraints cool off in many parts of the country.
But some of those improvements reflect buyers’ retreat from the market. The index’s measure of economic instability, which shapes consumers’ decisions around when and whether to spring for a home, rose to a two-year high last month. There are especially clear signs of a pullback in the South, with competition falling across broad swaths of central Texas and eastern Florida.
By the end of January, Florida had more homes for sale than at any point since 2012, Redfin reported in late February, after a 23% surge in inventory from the year before. Newly built properties hit the market while buyers stayed away, turned off by steep prices and mortgage rates, intensifying weather threats and a related surge in insurance costs, Redfin said.
Nationwide, weekly demand for 30-year fixed-rate mortgages plunged nearly 13%, the Mortgage Bankers Association reported Wednesday, as average interest rates for the popular home loans rose to 6.90% from 6.81%. Sales of previously owned homes, meanwhile, fell 5.9% last month from February’s level, according to a report Thursday from the National Association of Realtors. It’s the slowest pace for March since 2009.
Not every builder is being affected in the same ways. Some are already grappling with major operational problems, while others are holding steady and signaling readiness to deal with some turbulence.
Tommy Carter, a shop manager at Sexson Mechanical Co., a contracting firm in Greenwood, Indiana, said manufacturers are already flagging “tariff surcharges on equipment we ordered before the tariff but [was] delivered after.”
He shared with NBC News several notices from suppliers, dated last week, alerting Sexson to price hikes from 2% to as much as 91% on parts like valves and other common components, citing 145% levies on China and Trump’s 10% universal duty on foreign goods.
Carter said contractors are “scrambling” to make purchases “before the hammer comes down,” adding that he expects some builds already underway to be halted in coming months because of prohibitive cost increases.
For many industry players, even steep price hikes for certain materials can be manageable, as long as there aren’t too many of them, said Tim Martin, who owns Oklahoma Royal Homes in Claremore, Oklahoma. An HVAC system might go up by $300, he said, but that’s negligible in a million-dollar residential build.
Denny Van Moorleghem, president of Regency Homes in the Omaha, Nebraska, area, voiced concerns about tariffs on Canadian lumber, but so far he isn’t taking drastic action. Lumber remains temporarily exempted from Trump’s tariffs on Canada until the Commerce Department concludes its review of those imports.
“We’re looking at fall, maybe, to be a problem for lumber,” Van Moorleghem said. He’s keeping home prices steady for now but said higher lumber tariffs could eventually add $10,000 to the price of a $500,000 property.
Kirk, in Texas, said he’s looking into sourcing more materials locally but waiting to see which tariffs stick. “Long bells are ringing, but it’s not this bottle on fire yet,” he said.
As some builders stockpile supplies, warehouse operators serving the industry stand to benefit, said Tim Negris, executive vice president of MOCA Systems, a construction services company. Higher warehousing demand could also spur construction of more storage space, even as builders pull back from putting up new homes.
“A lot of those builders are saying, ‘Whoa, OK, let’s just sell and fill in what we got and stockpile materials as is possible,’” Negris said. Apartment builders, who have already been facing tough market conditions, are especially eager to sock away supplies, he added.
Basu also said the outlook for multifamily construction looks tough. “If the cost of building these products becomes more expensive, it makes it even less likely these projects move forward, at least in the near term,” he said.