What’s happening to the new-home premium?

The average new home in the U.S. went for $324,467 in June, 28 percent more than the $254,200 price for existing homes, according to data from John Burns Real Estate Consulting LLC. That’s down from a 37 percent gap in 2015 and is the smallest difference since the end of 2010.

Toll Brothers Inc. surged after the biggest U.S. luxury-home builder reported rising orders, revenue and backlog, a sign to investors that wealthy buyers are feeling confident enough to make purchases despite talk of a housing slowdown.

The company reported a 27 percent increase in quarterly revenue and an 18 percent gain in signed contracts per Toll housing community. The value of the builder’s backlog at the end of last month was $6.48 billion, up 22 percent and “the highest at third-quarter end in a dozen years,” Toll Chief Financial Officer Marty Connor said in a statement.

As part of President Trump’s Executive Order demanding more job training in high-demand industries, “[t]he National Association of Home Builders and the Home Builders Institute promise to train 50,000 in homebuilding careers over the next five years,” according to National Mortgage News. The Department of Labor recently provided guidelines for the “industry-led apprenticeship programs.” National Mortgage News reported that “[t]he next steps for the organizations include obtaining a determination that their apprenticeship practices meet the criteria set forth by the DOL.”

The National Home Builders Association’s Eye on Housing reported that Single Family Home starts have increased: “NAHB analysis of the Survey of Construction (SOC) shows that, nationally, there were 847,830 new single-family units started in 2017, 9% higher than the units started in 2016.” South Atlantic, West South Central and Mountain Divisions “accounted for about 60% of the total new single-family housing starts in 2017.”

Shares of Lennar Corp. are rallying after the homebuilder reported results that blew past expectations in the firm’s first full quarter since completing its $5.7 billion acquisition of CalAtlantic Group Inc.

Second-quarter revenue and earnings per share both topped the highest expectations, and new home orders surged 62 percent from a year ago, compared with the 55 percent average estimate among three analysts surveyed by Bloomberg.

Reprinted courtesy of Lily Katz, Bloomberg and Proshant Gopal, Bloomberg

Weather events such as hurricanes and wildfires inflicted $306 billion in damages in the United States in 2017, making it the most expensive year for natural disasters ever recorded. In this environment, fleet managers must protect their equipment year-round to avoid costly repairs and speed up project timelines.

Reprinted courtesy of Construction Executive, a publication of Associated Builders and Contractors. All rights reserved.
Mr. DeBoer may be contacted at info@moreycorp.com

Sentiment among U.S. homebuilders rose for the first time in five months as job gains and tax cuts helped keep buyer demand healthy amid rising prices and mortgage rates, according to data Tuesday from the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo.

In the early morning hours of April 24, flames ripped through a 180-unit wood-framed apartment complex under construction in Concord, Calif. Fortunately, the site was unoccupied at the time of the fire, which firefighters brought under control by dawn. But the damage was done; the $55-million project was declared a total loss.

Hedge fund Solus Alternative Asset Management is considering an escalation in its battle with Blackstone Group LP over a homebuilder’s controversial debt refinancing.

After suing Blackstone’s GSO credit unit and Hovnanian Enterprises Inc. for engineering a credit-default swaps payout that’s leaving Solus with steep losses, the hedge fund’s CEO, Chris Pucillo, said in a Bloomberg Television interview that he may just buy the builder’s bonds to limit his losses and cut Blackstone’s profit.

Reprinted courtesy of Erik Schatzker , Bloomberg and Sridhar Natarajan, Bloomberg

Princeton, one of America’s richest towns, must build more affordable housing, a judge ruled in a decision that may have ripple effects across New Jersey.

The home of Princeton University, the state’s only Ivy League school, must plan for 753 low-and middle-income homes, more than double what the borough had anticipated, according to the March 8 ruling by Superior Court Judge Mary Jacobson. Its wealthy neighbor, West Windsor, has a burden of 1,500 homes for people of little means in a state with high living costs, Jacobson ruled.

A gauge of contracts to purchase previously-owned U.S. homes unexpectedly declined in January to a more than three-year low, reflecting a shortage of inventories and rising mortgage rates, according to data released Wednesday from the National Association of Realtors in Washington.