Latest / The Land Development Podcast with Ryan Glick / Industry News: Berkshire Bets Big on Homebuilding, Single-Family Growth Moves Outward, and Nashville Leads a Buyer-Friendly Market - TLP169

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Industry News: Berkshire Bets Big on Homebuilding, Single-Family Growth Moves Outward, and Nashville Leads a Buyer-Friendly Market - TLP169 · The Land Development Podcast with Ryan Glick

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I think this is a bias that we need to be cautious about because just because Berkshire doing is doing it doesn't mean they're right.
• 0:06
  SPEAKER_01: They have just as much an opportunity to be wrong as anybody else.
• 0:09
  SPEAKER_01: Now, their track record's pretty good.
• 0:11
  SPEAKER_01: But I wouldn't put them on a pedestal as God and use this to as a predictor of the next 10 years because they don't know either.
• 0:19
  SPEAKER_01: But they're betting that it's going to be largely positive for their investors to own things like this as opposed to sitting in cash.
• 0:28
  SPEAKER_01: So that's their option.
• 0:29
  SPEAKER_01: They've got a ton of cash.
• 0:31
  SPEAKER_01: So they're not, they're not comparing really this business to other businesses as much as they are comparing this to cash.
• 0:37
  SPEAKER_01: And certainly this is better return than cash.
• 0:55
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, what's going on, everybody?
• 0:56
  SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the Land Development Podcast.
• 0:58
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Ryan Glick.
• 1:00
  SPEAKER_00: We have an industry news episode for you today, and joining me as always is Charles Covey.
• 1:05
  SPEAKER_00: What's going on, Charles?
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: How are you?
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: Hey, not too bad.
• 1:09
  SPEAKER_00: Not too bad.
• 1:10
  SPEAKER_00: I'm I'm coming off of a uh an old man problem a couple days ago.
• 1:15
  SPEAKER_01: We all have these, Ryan.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: I know, I know, but I I'm sitting here at my desk working.
• 1:20
  SPEAKER_00: I go upstairs and I grab like a uh a bag of popcorn, chewing on my popcorn, and then crunch right into uh one of those.
• 1:31
  SPEAKER_00: I was corrected on this the other day.
• 1:33
  SPEAKER_00: It's not the seed, but the uh colonel.
• 1:35
  SPEAKER_00: Um colonel.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: The colonel.
• 1:37
  SPEAKER_00: And uh it freaking broke part of my tooth off.
• 1:40
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, well, that's terrible to me.
• 1:43
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, ter terrible.
• 1:44
  SPEAKER_01: And I've been really fortunate to never break one, but I've heard stories and it does not sound like a good time.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: No, that was my first time ever experiencing it, and it wasn't great.
• 1:52
  SPEAKER_00: So anyway, I spent yesterday with the dentist getting that taken care of, and uh, yeah, here we here we are today.
• 1:57
  SPEAKER_00: Still going.
• 1:58
  SPEAKER_01: Glad you're passed up, good as new.
• 2:00
  SPEAKER_00: So the moral of the story is to watch out for those kernels.
• 2:02
  SPEAKER_00: Dang, man.
• 2:03
  SPEAKER_00: I know I've I've done it a million times.
• 2:05
  SPEAKER_00: I think my teeth are just, I guess, getting older or something.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 2:08
  SPEAKER_00: I don't know.
• 2:09
  SPEAKER_00: Weird, weird situation, not ideal.
• 2:11
  SPEAKER_00: I don't recommend it.
• 2:12
  SPEAKER_00: Well, with that, we uh, you know, we when we recorded our last episode, I think the day after we recorded this whole Berkshire Hathaway acquisition of Taylor Morrison came out.
• 2:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so we didn't get a chance to talk about it because we had already recorded.
• 2:27
  SPEAKER_00: So we're gonna get into that first today.
• 2:29
  SPEAKER_00: Uh after that, we're gonna talk about some of the latest single-family construction data that's been released from the National Association of Home Builders.
• 2:36
  SPEAKER_00: And then uh lastly, we're gonna finish out with a look at the number of sellers versus the number of buyers across a few different metros around the country.
• 2:47
  SPEAKER_00: So, first, we're gonna get into article number one.
• 2:51
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, this one comes to us from real estate news, Berkshire Hathaway to acquire Taylor Morrison for$8.5 billion.
• 3:00
  SPEAKER_00: Berkshire Hathaway announced on May 31st that it's buying Taylor Morrison in an all-cash deal worth$8.5 billion.
• 3:07
  SPEAKER_00: The offer is$72.50 per share, which is a 24% premium over the closing price on May 29th.
• 3:15
  SPEAKER_00: Taylor Morrison is currently the sixth largest builder in the country with about 13,000 closings in 2025, 350 plus communities in 21 markets across 12 states.
• 3:26
  SPEAKER_00: Berkshire already owns Clayton Properties Group, the 12th largest builder, which did roughly 10,000 closings last year in manufactured and modular housing in the Southeast.
• 3:36
  SPEAKER_00: Combined, the new platform is about 23,000 closings a year, which puts Berkshire in fourth place behind Dear Horton, Lenar, and Poulty Group.
• 3:45
  SPEAKER_00: The deal closes in the second half of 2026, pending shareholder and regulatory approval.
• 3:50
  SPEAKER_00: Tiller Morrison gets taken private and delisted from the New York Stock Exchange.
• 3:55
  SPEAKER_00: So a couple things come to my mind on this, Charles, and really interesting getting your thoughts on this.
• 3:59
  SPEAKER_00: When I see news like this, and you see news from other large builders trying to acquire each other, do you think, I mean, first, do you think it's good for the industry to have the builders, basically builders getting bigger and bigger, and maybe they're gobbling up a lot of the small guys?
• 4:16
  SPEAKER_01: We can look at other industries.
• 4:18
  SPEAKER_01: We've talked about the car manufacturers before.
• 4:20
  SPEAKER_01: There's a ton of other instances of pushing out all the little guys, combining, combining, combining, combining until you have monstrosities.
• 4:30
  SPEAKER_01: Banking, cars, I mean, you just go down the list, grocery stores, all of it's the same.
• 4:37
  SPEAKER_01: And that's the capitalist nature that we live in.
• 4:40
  SPEAKER_01: That's what the US was built on is more and bigger, more and bigger, always more and bigger.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: And this just follows that same protocol.
• 4:48
  SPEAKER_01: Is it good for the average person?
• 4:51
  SPEAKER_01: Does it does it drive value to them?
• 4:53
  SPEAKER_01: Almost certainly not.
• 4:54
  SPEAKER_01: But that's not the point.
• 4:55
  SPEAKER_01: The point is that it makes more money for somebody who's controlling the enterprise.
• 4:59
  SPEAKER_01: And there's efficiencies and other ways that it makes sense.
• 5:02
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's the world we live in.
• 5:03
  SPEAKER_01: That's what we built the United States on is do more and do bigger.
• 5:07
  SPEAKER_01: And that's what we're looking at.
• 5:10
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't think it's overall good per se, unless you are one of the owners.
• 5:15
  SPEAKER_01: And it's probably good for you.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: You can buy a bigger plane or a bigger boat or a bigger island or whatever the thing is that you like to buy with your money.
• 5:23
  SPEAKER_01: But but scale tends to be this monster that has to get fed.
• 5:27
  SPEAKER_01: And so at some point they got to buy more stuff and they got to get bigger and they gotta keep shareholders happy by doing so.
• 5:34
  SPEAKER_00: What about the, you know, this is Berkshire Hathaway making this move, and I think a lot of people put a lot of uh a lot of stock into what they do, the types of moves they make and the decisions they make.
• 5:45
  SPEAKER_00: And I saw a lot of people celebrating this across LinkedIn and different places of essentially saying, well, if they're if Berkshire Hathaway is doing this, that must mean that the you know, the construction industry, the building industry is headed in the in a great direction.
• 6:00
  SPEAKER_00: You know, what are your thoughts on that?
• 6:01
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I think this is a bias that we need to be cautious about because just because Birch are doing is doing it doesn't mean they're right.
• 6:08
  SPEAKER_01: They have just as much an opportunity to be wrong as anybody else.
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_01: Now, their track record's pretty good.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: But I wouldn't put them on a pedestal as God and use this to as a predictor of the next 10 years because they don't know either.
• 6:21
  SPEAKER_01: But they're betting that it's going to be largely positive for their investors to own things like this as opposed to sitting in cash.
• 6:31
  SPEAKER_01: So that's their option.
• 6:32
  SPEAKER_01: They've got a ton of cash.
• 6:33
  SPEAKER_01: So they're not they're not comparing really this business to other businesses as much as they are comparing this to cash.
• 6:39
  SPEAKER_01: And certainly this is better return than cash.
• 6:42
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if it's going to be a better return than other businesses.
• 6:45
  SPEAKER_01: That's the challenge.
• 6:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, there may be other businesses that would be a better return that just didn't happen to be for sale right now, and so Berkshire couldn't buy them.
• 6:52
  SPEAKER_01: So it's a it's a whole thing of what was available in the marketplace to put capital to work.
• 6:58
  SPEAKER_01: And was it in an industry that they believed in?
• 7:00
  SPEAKER_01: They're probably looking at dozens of, maybe even hundreds of deals, and this is the one that they decided to pull the trigger on, amongst others.
• 7:07
  SPEAKER_01: So I wouldn't use that as too big of a predictor, although it's a data point, but it's just a data point amongst others.
• 7:14
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and it's uh, I mean, it wasn't that long ago that I I feel like they had put money into, gosh, I can't remember.
• 7:19
  SPEAKER_00: Was it D.R.
• 7:20
  SPEAKER_00: Horton or Lenar, one of the two?
• 7:21
  SPEAKER_01: Oh, I mean I think they both bought, yeah, they bought a bunch of both.
• 7:25
  SPEAKER_01: There was a particular point.
• 7:26
  SPEAKER_01: Um, I think that the they believed that the value of those two companies, well, I think they were trading at what they believed was a good value, so a place for them to get in.
• 7:35
  SPEAKER_01: I think it's actually proven correct.
• 7:36
  SPEAKER_01: I think those have gone up a little bit.
• 7:37
  SPEAKER_01: So I think that's probably was probably a good move.
• 7:39
  SPEAKER_01: They're continuing to demonstrate that they like housing.
• 7:43
  SPEAKER_01: So they the Clayton Holmes thing, um that they have the very signal the in in the mobile home space, they're the they're the 800-pound gorilla.
• 7:52
  SPEAKER_01: And now they're at least in the consideration for one of the big boys in the in the uh home building space.
• 7:58
  SPEAKER_01: So there's still a pretty big gap.
• 8:01
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Taylor Morrison was the sixth largest.
• 8:02
  SPEAKER_01: There's still a big gap to get to the top two because those guys are unbelievable.
• 8:08
  SPEAKER_01: So, but they're it wouldn't shock me if they're gonna buy somebody else and and continue to grow this.
• 8:13
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, so we'll keep an eye on this.
• 8:14
  SPEAKER_00: I just thought it was interesting to see.
• 8:16
  SPEAKER_00: And I I think whenever you see acquisitions like this and you you see it continue to happen, you you do wonder like, is this good for the industry?
• 8:23
  SPEAKER_00: Is it what does it mean?
• 8:24
  SPEAKER_00: You know, who are the winners, who are the losers from different uh transactions like this?
• 8:29
  SPEAKER_00: And you know, we'll we'll see how this plays out.
• 8:32
  SPEAKER_00: Let's go ahead and move on to the next segment, which is from the comments.
• 8:34
  SPEAKER_00: I've got a couple here today.
• 8:36
  SPEAKER_00: So, first one comes to us a comment on YouTube from Where the Fox at comment says, Yeah, you're right.
• 8:43
  SPEAKER_00: Home builders never build bad buildings there or here.
• 8:47
  SPEAKER_00: What's the average cost of a home in the U.S.
• 8:49
  SPEAKER_00: right now?
• 8:50
  SPEAKER_00: So this one comes from a short that was posted on YouTube where uh prior guest, um Alec, when he was on with me, he was talking about some comparisons between Texas and Norway.
• 9:01
  SPEAKER_00: And he was basically talking about how he really likes the free market in the U.S.
• 9:05
  SPEAKER_00: And he was making the comment that if you you're not gonna be in the industry very long if you build bad buildings or if you do bad construction, because the free market is going to push you out.
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: And that was his point, and so I don't think that where the Fox at quite understood what he was saying there because he wasn't saying people aren't building bad buildings or doing bad construction.
• 9:25
  SPEAKER_00: He's saying if you do that, you won't be in business very long.
• 9:28
  SPEAKER_00: And that's what he likes about the U.S.
• 9:30
  SPEAKER_00: and his experiences here so far.
• 9:32
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 9:33
  SPEAKER_01: Let the free market do what it does.
• 9:35
  SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: And the next one here comes to us on Spotify from Lee, is all it says here.
• 9:42
  SPEAKER_00: Way too much advertising.
• 9:44
  SPEAKER_00: I'm out.
• 9:45
  SPEAKER_00: So I this one, I saw this one, it kind of made me laugh.
• 9:47
  SPEAKER_00: I'm like, what are you talking about?
• 9:49
  SPEAKER_00: What advertising?
• 9:51
  SPEAKER_00: No, that's I'm just like, is he commenting on the right show or what's going on?
• 9:55
  SPEAKER_00: I looked back at the episode he commented on.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_00: It was actually one of our episodes we did together, one of our industry news, and I looked and we had a we did have an ad on the show that was like 59 seconds out of a 36-minute episode.
• 10:07
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm like, is that too much advertising?
• 10:09
  SPEAKER_00: Have you watched podcasts before?
• 10:12
  SPEAKER_00: Because you can get on some podcasts and have, you know, five, six minutes of ads throughout the episode.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_00: And we purposely keep our ads low because we don't want to annoy people with ads.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_00: And so anyway, I saw this and I wanted to make sure that all of you listening in know that we think about this kind of thing and we don't feel like we have a problem with ads, but uh, this is a first for me seeing this out here.
• 10:35
  SPEAKER_00: All right, let's go ahead and move on to our second article, which comes to us from the National Association of Home Builders Eye on Housing blog.
• 10:44
  SPEAKER_00: HBGIQ1 2026, single family construction slips across all geographies.
• 10:51
  SPEAKER_00: From the article, the NAHB Home Building Geography Index for the first quarter of 2026 dropped on June 2nd, indicating single family construction is falling in every single geographic category.
• 11:03
  SPEAKER_00: Large metro core counties, which are the most expensive urban land in the country, are down 16% year over year on a four-quarter moving average.
• 11:12
  SPEAKER_00: That is a 3.2 percentage point deterioration from the prior quarter.
• 11:17
  SPEAKER_00: Non-rural areas overall, meaning any county inside a metro area, are down 9.2%.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_00: Multifamily is the opposite story.
• 11:26
  SPEAKER_00: Large metro core counties grew 20.8% in the same quarter.
• 11:30
  SPEAKER_00: Non-rural counties grew 10.5% overall.
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_00: Large metro outlying counties for multifamily are down 24.6%.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_00: Single family market share keeps shifting outward.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_00: Large metro cores are now 14.7% of single family permits, down from 16% a year ago, and down 4.1 points from a decade ago.
• 11:51
  SPEAKER_00: Outlying counties in small metros are now 10.8% of single family permits, up nearly two points over the last decade.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_00: So I don't know that this is necessarily surprising that the the number of you know developments and everything is like shifting outward from the core of some of these big metros.
• 12:11
  SPEAKER_00: But what are your thoughts when you see this uh data, Charles?
• 12:15
  SPEAKER_01: It doesn't seem surprising to me.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: We we we know, those of us that are in the business, that it we we keep pushing outward in every major metro that we're we're working in, we're just pushing out, trying to find lower land basis in an effort to drive costs down.
• 12:28
  SPEAKER_01: The construction cost in the city versus the construction cost in the county is or or in the periphery areas is essentially the same, right?
• 12:35
  SPEAKER_01: Outside you know, all construction types being equal.
• 12:38
  SPEAKER_01: But the land basis is can be dramatically different.
• 12:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so we're seeking a lower basis to get that cost down.
• 12:43
  SPEAKER_01: And that way that's what drives this.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: We've been seeing it a lot in multifamily, especially in DFW, just trying to get outside of those major hubs in a way that we can uh can get rents in a more affordable spot.
• 12:53
  SPEAKER_01: So not shocking.
• 12:54
  SPEAKER_01: The scenario that I think is not great, though, is that it it ends up being not good for the municipalities over time, and probably overall not good for people over time as we continue to sprawl.
• 13:07
  SPEAKER_01: It creates a pretty significant load on the infrastructure and the resources to serve all of these buildings that are sprawling out across uh the periphery of a metro.
• 13:16
  SPEAKER_01: And it makes it tough for a city that's, you know, especially when a city gets to 30, 40, 50, 60 years after their boom, and now they've got to maintain all this sprawl, but they don't have the now the the value of the homes has gone down, and they don't have the tax basis per the amount of infrastructure that they have.
• 13:35
  SPEAKER_01: So the tax basis in a denser scenario maintains a pretty strong basis compared to the infrastructure in place.
• 13:42
  SPEAKER_01: And so that's it's easier to maintain.
• 13:44
  SPEAKER_01: So the sprawl is not overall good.
• 13:46
  SPEAKER_01: Uh if you look at most of Europe, they don't have the sprawl in the same way that we do.
• 13:50
  SPEAKER_01: Even in small towns, it's dense in a really, really tight area, and then it goes to farmland.
• 13:55
  SPEAKER_01: And whereas we're just going to spread it out, you know, single story is as far as we can go because we want to have space between us and our neighbors.
• 14:01
  SPEAKER_01: So I don't know that that's actually a positive thing long term.
• 14:05
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but it is the way it is.
• 14:06
  SPEAKER_01: That people want a cheaper house, and that's the only way to do it to get a lower land basis.
• 14:10
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I'm glad you brought that up because that was one thing that stood out for me from a back on episode 156 when I had uh Chuck Morone from Strong Towns on.
• 14:20
  SPEAKER_00: That was one of the big things I took away from that conversation was just the cost that goes to these municipalities as we do continue to spread out from all the infrastructure and everything that's required.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_00: And that's why so many cities are ended up going bankrupt and have so many financial problems, is because they can't keep up with the maintenance and everything over the years.
• 14:40
  SPEAKER_00: So it is something that it makes sense that it's a concern as we go forward.
• 14:44
  SPEAKER_00: And if we do continue to go out wider, somebody's gonna have to pay for it.
• 14:48
  SPEAKER_00: And it's like, who's that gonna be?
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: Right.
• 14:50
  SPEAKER_01: If cities were thinking ahead, and instead of thinking five or 10 years down the road, they were thinking 50 or 100 years down the road, they would start with density much earlier.
• 14:59
  SPEAKER_01: You look at the way the progression typically goes, uh, you know, a a new city that's on the periphery that starts to see some growth, they they want they want things to be spread out.
• 15:08
  SPEAKER_01: Well, people can move to the country and they can have a little more room.
• 15:11
  SPEAKER_01: The challenge is now that's going to be a very, very difficult thing to serve over time.
• 15:16
  SPEAKER_01: And so even, you know, even something like 80-foot lots, which would be a very common thing around the periphery of any major Texas metro, that's a pretty low, unless you've got big houses on it, it's a pretty low density product that makes it pretty tough to serve those utilities, serve all that infrastructure over the long term.
• 15:33
  SPEAKER_01: So starting earlier with density and a push to density would be a smart move for cities, but we just typically don't see that happen.
• 15:40
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah.
• 15:41
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll we'll see what happens here with uh as this continues to go.
• 15:44
  SPEAKER_00: I don't expect it necessarily to stop.
• 15:45
  SPEAKER_00: I know that there's a lot more people, more developers who are getting into a little higher density, but you still see just a lot of these uh single family developments that are going on on the outskirts and they continue to go out wider.
• 15:57
  SPEAKER_00: So I feel like as long as money's to be be had on some of these projects and they're able to buy the, you know, acquire the land at um, like you said, a low enough basis, then these projects are going to continue to happen.
• 16:09
  SPEAKER_00: So we'll we'll see how it plays out over time.
• 16:11
  SPEAKER_00: But yeah, I don't see it stopping any anytime soon.
• 16:14
  unknown: All right.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_00: Well, let's go ahead and move on to article number three, which comes to us from Redfin.
• 16:19
  SPEAKER_00: Headline reads Nashville, Miami, and Austin lead buyers markets.
• 16:24
  SPEAKER_00: From this article, nationally, there are 46.9% more sellers than buyers.
• 16:30
  SPEAKER_00: That's roughly half a million more sellers across the country.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_00: 35 out of 50 most populous metros are buyers' markets right now.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_00: The top of the leaderboard is almost entirely Sunbelt.
• 16:41
  SPEAKER_00: Nashville is the strongest with 130% more sellers than buyers, then Miami at 122%, Austin at 116%, Houston at 111%, and San Antonio at 108%.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_00: Rounding out the top 10 with Las Vegas, Fort Lauderdale, Dallas, Phoenix, and Jacksonville.
• 16:59
  SPEAKER_00: So six of the top 10 are Florida, are in Florida and Texas.
• 17:03
  SPEAKER_00: Sellers' markets are now down to seven.
• 17:06
  SPEAKER_00: They're mostly Northeast, Nassau County, Milwaukee, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, Newark, New Brunswick, Providence, and the one West Coast outlier, San Francisco.
• 17:18
  SPEAKER_00: From Asad Khan, Redfin senior economist, quote, with lots of inventory to choose from, buyers in most of the country can be selective and ask for concessions while sellers still need to price competitively to stand out.
• 17:32
  SPEAKER_00: So uh initial thoughts on this, Charles?
• 17:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, it isn't too surprising because these are all the same markets that had the biggest growth post COVID-COVID.
• 17:40
  SPEAKER_01: Okay.
• 17:41
  SPEAKER_01: So if you just looked at this and you didn't look at the context of the previous five years and you said, okay, you just gonna look at the information that you have on the screen, you would say, oh my gosh, these markets are they're crumbling.
• 17:52
  SPEAKER_01: They're literally falling apart.
• 17:54
  SPEAKER_01: But that's not true at all because they're actually still very strong.
• 17:56
  SPEAKER_01: Prices are still good.
• 17:57
  SPEAKER_01: If you bought a house in '97 and you're selling it now, you did great.
• 18:02
  SPEAKER_01: You'd have done better to sell it a couple of years ago, but you're certainly not in a free fall situation.
• 18:07
  SPEAKER_01: These are just markets that were probably too hot, probably overpriced, and now they're correcting back into what is probably very close to the trend line.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I was kind of thinking uh about that as well.
• 18:20
  SPEAKER_00: Like if you look at these, because my initial thought was when I was looking at them was taking them out of context, without context, and saying, man, what's going on in some of these markets?
• 18:28
  SPEAKER_00: Like, are people leaving?
• 18:29
  SPEAKER_00: Like, are because we never hear about people leaving these particular cities.
• 18:33
  SPEAKER_00: These are usually a lot of the cities where people are moving to.
• 18:36
  SPEAKER_00: And so as you see more sellers than buyers in some of those markets, it it does get you scratching your head a little bit.
• 18:41
  SPEAKER_00: But what you described there does make sense.
• 18:44
  SPEAKER_00: It's in sync with things we've talked about a lot in the past, you know, post-COVID and what happened in a lot of these markets with overbuilding and everything.
• 18:51
  SPEAKER_00: So definitely not surprising.
• 18:54
  SPEAKER_01: Another element that we you and I discussed before we started is that we're not sure about the data.
• 19:00
  SPEAKER_01: When it says 46.9% more sellers than buyers, what are those sellers exactly?
• 19:05
  SPEAKER_01: Are these all people that need to sell in the next 30 days and are willing to give whatever concessions to move because they have to?
• 19:12
  SPEAKER_01: Probably not.
• 19:13
  SPEAKER_01: Are some of these sellers not really in a rush at all, but they wouldn't mind moving up to a larger house?
• 19:18
  SPEAKER_01: Yeah, let's put a number out there and see what happens.
• 19:21
  SPEAKER_01: There's probably some of those.
• 19:23
  SPEAKER_01: So understanding the balance of who really is selling, I think is a very important element to this.
• 19:28
  SPEAKER_01: My guess is there's probably people that don't need to sell, but they wouldn't mind selling and doing something different.
• 19:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so they're putting it out there at a price that is probably higher than it needs to be, and it may just sit and it may not get a lot of action.
• 19:39
  SPEAKER_01: I I tend to go on Zillow just as kind of an interesting exercise.
• 19:44
  SPEAKER_01: I'm not in the market at the moment, but I like to look and see.
• 19:46
  SPEAKER_01: And across the Dallas Fort Worth Metro, I see a lot of houses that get a reduction after sitting on the market for 30 to 60 days.
• 19:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so the prices that people are asking, it wasn't the I need to sell at price.
• 19:58
  SPEAKER_01: It was the, yeah, I might sell it at that number.
• 20:00
  SPEAKER_01: So let's see what happens.
• 20:02
  SPEAKER_01: And then you see some of them pull off the market because obviously the number they wanted wasn't realistic.
• 20:06
  SPEAKER_01: The market couldn't bear it.
• 20:07
  SPEAKER_01: And then others actually might need to sell it.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so then you start to see those numbers traced down.
• 20:12
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I did a little bit of additional research because we, like you said, we talked about it before we recorded here.
• 20:17
  SPEAKER_00: And it does seem like that's the consensus, is that it is a lot of people selling that are putting feelers out there.
• 20:24
  SPEAKER_00: They don't have to sell.
• 20:25
  SPEAKER_00: You know, they they might want to move because they've been waiting for a while to move, you know, because of uh interest rates or whatever, but they don't have to, and that's why prices haven't come down as quickly as maybe you'd expect if people really did need to sell or there was a big sell-off or something was happening.
• 20:39
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I think you're spot on there.
• 20:42
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that brings us to a close here.
• 20:44
  SPEAKER_00: Uh any final thoughts, Charles, before we wrap up?
• 20:47
  SPEAKER_01: We don't have a controversial topic this week, which is disappointing for me.
• 20:51
  SPEAKER_00: I know, I know.
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: I just love to uh to have a discussion and and you know stir the pot a little bit.
• 20:56
  SPEAKER_01: There are certainly controversial things going on, but nothing that we thought was was critical enough.
• 21:01
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, you know, certainly Trump said something controversial this week, I'm I'm sure.
• 21:04
  SPEAKER_01: Uh but that's that's every week.
• 21:06
  SPEAKER_01: So I I think that there's uh there's lots of things going on, but nothing that was radically different than what we had seen in previous weeks.
• 21:14
  SPEAKER_01: So touching on some other topics, uh maybe ne maybe next episode we can try something that's a little more outside the box.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Uh, but a lot of the same stuff happening, consolidation, things are not bad, but also things are not booming.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: So I think a lot of us feel that in our business, that things are okay.
• 21:28
  SPEAKER_01: We can still get deals done, but things are not what they were at some point in the future, indicating that we're probably in a bit of a trough in the the market in the market cycle and that it's probably going to improve over the next number of years, which might tie back to the fact that Berkshire and others are investing in this space because they think that we're at a point where there's really good value.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: So I would say overall, probably a good time for us to be looking ahead at what's going to happen over the next several years.
• 21:56
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'd completely agree because I I feel like the when before we pressed record, I was talking about how the last two weeks it just didn't feel like there was that much that was going on in the industry as a lot of things that we've expected, not a whole lot of surprising things outside of that whole, you know, acquisition announcement that happened uh a couple weeks ago.
• 22:14
  SPEAKER_00: There hasn't been a whole lot.
• 22:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, but yeah, we'll we'll uh dig into some other things and we'll get some other topics out here for our next episode.
• 22:21
  SPEAKER_00: And uh and yeah, we'll we'll find something.
• 22:24
  SPEAKER_00: There's there's something out there.
• 22:25
  SPEAKER_00: And you guys can always let us know too.
• 22:27
  SPEAKER_00: If there's certain topics you want us to dig into, certain things that you have questions about, you know, always you can comment or shoot us a message.
• 22:33
  SPEAKER_00: Either way, um, we can dig into some of those topics on future episodes.
• 22:37
  SPEAKER_00: So with that said, we'll come to a close here.
• 22:39
  SPEAKER_00: Appreciate you all as always tuning in.
• 22:41
  SPEAKER_00: And if you're not already subscribed, please click that button.
• 22:43
  SPEAKER_00: We'd love to have you back for the next one.
• 22:45
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, we will see you all back here tomorrow on our next interview.