A reality of the current housing market is that homeowners who managed to borrow at a low mortgage rate are holding on tight to their good fortune. Approximately 85 percent of owners have a rate below 5 percent – well below the going average rate of 7.23 percent for a 30-year fixed-rate loan. Consequently, the availability of existing homes to buy is tighter than usual. And more would-be buyers are turning to the new home construction market to join the homeowner ranks. Which means more customers for homebuilders. Wall Street has been taking notice. As of mid-August, the stock prices of major American homebuilders such as DR Horton, Lennar, and NVR, have all gained about 30 percent in value since the start of 2023, according to a report by The Financial Times. Shares in the PulteGroup are up about 80 percent. One of those investors jumping onto the homebuilder bandwagon is Berkshire Hathaway, the iconic investment operation headed by Warren Buffett, which reportedly poured $814 million into homebuilding stocks in August. According to the National Association of Homebuilders, new construction homes represented about 30 percent of the national housing inventory as of the end of July, compared to a typical rate of about 12 percent. And the pace of new homebuilding permits is up about 10 percent over the same time last year. Larger, publicly traded homebuilders also possess the wherewithal to offer financing to buyers or incentives, such as credits toward closing costs, or mortgage rate buydowns.
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