The Washington Post says homebuilders are super excited about Donald Trump's election:
“The energy right now is just unbelievable,” said Greg Hardwick, president and owner of Hardwick General Contracting, a custom home builder in central Florida. “Among builders, among clients — anybody that is taking a risk in the housing market right now feels really good.”
....Interviews with builders across the South, Midwest and West Coast highlighted two regulations the industry hopes Trump could pare back as he tries to cut red tape. One prohibits building homes near water, or roadside drainage ditches that connect to creeks and streams, without first obtaining a federal wetlands permit. Another has to do with energy efficiency requirements for certain government-backed properties that were made stricter under the Biden administration. Generally, builders say both rules add costs and delays.
Well, you never know. But the water rule is part of federal law—the 1972 Clean Water Act—which explicitly requires a permit from the Army Corps of Engineers if you want build something that impacts recognized wetlands. And many states have complementary laws of their own. This would be no easy thing to repeal.
The energy efficiency standards are newer, but still outside the 60-day "lookback" period that would allow the incoming Congress to overturn them. They could only be repealed by going through the full rulemaking process all over again.
As for builders feeling great, the Post notes that "builder sentiment improved for the third straight month in November," which is true. But it's still not exactly sky high:
As for home sales themselves, they've been stuck in the doldrums ever since mortgage rates went up. Maybe they have nowhere to go but up, but that depends on the Fed way more than it does on Trump.
Good luck building those homes with the deportations.
...and tariffs on Canadian lumber.
It was an utterly idiotic piece of crap propaganda.
Bezos is clearly looking to kiss Trump’s ass.
How on earth will tariffs on Canadian lumber and Chinese-made appliances and massive deportations of construction workers, along with enormous deficits that fuel inflation and jack up interest rates spur home building?
It’s insane.
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Just wait until all of those government workes in Northern VA, MD and DC try to sell their houses because they are unemployed or reassigned. The sound of the housing market crashing will be deafening.
Or the workers flip from civilian billets to contractor slots like the same old dance was done 25-30 years ago.
Who knows but I've built up the nest egg hugely to weather the storm.
Federal workers exist all across the country. It won’t just be homes in metro DC that go up for sale and tank the rest of the housing market if the federal workforce is halved.
In Sackett SCOTUS held that "adjacent" doesn't mean "adjacent" when referring to wetlands. If adjacent doesn't mean adjacent, it's hard to see how anything in the Clean Water Act has any meaning. So build away wherever you want. SCOTUS has your back.
It's perfectly nice to think that it wouldn't be so easy for Trump to gut environmental protection. But of course he did his share of damage in his first term, and a hyped up version is precisely what most of us have been fearing.
So, when was the NAHB Housing Market Index last at 100?
Hard to see how we'll need new housing, as mass deportations will open up lots of existing housing stock. (Remember, this was literally their policy position during the televised debates.)
And a repeat of a mass pandemic or pandemics will open up housing supply, also.
This feels like a post-election circlejerk by one of the most reliably Trumpy constituencies there is. It’s optimism because their guy won, not supported by any objective changes.
This was what I wanted to post. I'd have been a bit less crude, but I'm not a guy, so...
Just my usual tip to consider that building crappier houses in easily flooded locations does not mean cheaper houses, the key issue is in fact land prices and finance availability and buyer income has a lot to do with that. More regulations just means better new houses.
Confirms my belief based on personal experience that homebuilders are stupid and don't know how homes are built.
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