Latest / The Land Development Podcast with Ryan Glick / Industry News: Lumber Tariffs Stay High, New Home Sales Slow, and Big Builders Tighten Their Grip - TLP181
Transcript
- 0:00SPEAKER_01: Now, what we're seeing today is that the ups and downs tend to be a little bit smoother in the higher echelons of price point.
- 0:09SPEAKER_01: And that's the only place where you still see those smaller builders that build a handful of homes a year.
- 0:14SPEAKER_01: You can still do that in the million plus range.
- 0:17SPEAKER_01: And that's something that that a small builder can still do.
- 0:20SPEAKER_01: But if you look at 50, 70 years ago, there were lots of small builders building entry-level and move-up product.
- 0:27SPEAKER_01: And they might build just a handful of houses a year.
- 0:30SPEAKER_01: It's a nice little business for them.
- 0:31SPEAKER_01: They made a nice income.
- 0:33SPEAKER_01: It was essentially a job, but it was a business.
- 0:36SPEAKER_01: It was a job.
- 0:37SPEAKER_01: And they were happy.
- 0:38SPEAKER_01: They could control their time a little bit.
- 0:40SPEAKER_01: And it's a pretty good living, to be honest.
- 0:43SPEAKER_01: And it's very tough to do now.
- 0:45SPEAKER_01: It's just almost impossible to do unless you're in that million plus price point.
- 1:04SPEAKER_00: Hey, what's going on, everybody?
- 1:06SPEAKER_00: Welcome back to the Land Development Podcast.
- 1:08SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Ryan Glick.
- 1:10SPEAKER_00: We have an industry news episode for you today.
- 1:12SPEAKER_00: And joining me as always is Charles Covey.
- 1:15SPEAKER_00: How's it going, Charles?
- 1:16SPEAKER_01: It's great, Ryan.
- 1:17SPEAKER_01: How are you?
- 1:18SPEAKER_00: Yeah, doing pretty good.
- 1:19SPEAKER_00: Pretty good.
- 1:20SPEAKER_00: Um, we've had a lot of, you know, I was looking back at this last week, and we had uh Jay Knight on the show last week for the second time, and he just released a book called Zoned Out.
- 1:32SPEAKER_00: And uh the response to that has been really good across social media.
- 1:35SPEAKER_00: There's a lot of people, it seems to be catching a lot of attention.
- 1:39SPEAKER_00: It's resonating with people, the challenges that they're facing locally and everything.
- 1:42SPEAKER_00: And so um the first article we're actually gonna get into today is I'm gonna I'm gonna tie that to what he talked about a little bit when we get into it.
- 1:52SPEAKER_00: But the first article is gonna touch on an update on lumber tariffs and their impact on housing.
- 1:58SPEAKER_00: Um, but I think it's important because there are a lot of things that are within our control in the industry to change or improve.
- 2:05SPEAKER_00: And there's some things that are kind of outside of our control or scope of influence.
- 2:09SPEAKER_00: Um, from there, once we get past the uh lumber tariff conversation, we're gonna get into an article where we're gonna look at the updated new home sales numbers from Zonda, and then we're gonna finish out with looking at which markets do the 10 biggest builders now control.
- 2:24SPEAKER_00: So, with that said, let's go ahead and get into the first article.
- 2:28SPEAKER_00: Uh, this one comes to us from the National Association of Home Builders.
- 2:32SPEAKER_00: Headline reads Builders lumber tariff relief stalls, Canadian duties stay put until October.
- 2:39SPEAKER_00: From this article, builders were hoping for lumber tariff relief this summer, and it did not come.
- 2:44SPEAKER_00: The Commerce Department left the duty on Canadian softwood lumber unchanged at about 35% and pushed its final decision to October.
- 2:53SPEAKER_00: Add the separate 10% tariff from last October, and the all-in rate on Canadian lumber is roughly 45%.
- 3:00SPEAKER_00: Even the expected cut, if it lands in the fall, would only bring the effective rate back down to 35%.
- 3:07SPEAKER_00: National Association of Home Builders estimates tariffs have added about$10,900 to the cost of a new home.
- 3:14SPEAKER_00: More than 60% of builders say tariff actions have pushed their costs higher.
- 3:19SPEAKER_00: Canada supplies about 85% of U.S.
- 3:22SPEAKER_00: soft wood imports, and a typical single-family home uses about 15,000 board feet of framing.
- 3:28SPEAKER_00: And one thing to clarify on that last statement about the 85%, we actually looked at this before we started recording, and that is 85% of all imports come from Canada, not all of the uh lumber used in the United States.
- 3:41SPEAKER_00: It's more like 25% there.
- 3:44SPEAKER_00: So uh I guess Charles, on on this note here with the lumber, I guess I'm not you don't hear a lot of talk about tariffs anymore, it feels like.
- 3:52SPEAKER_00: It feels like something that just doesn't get brought up that much, but it's still clearly having an impact on our industry.
- 3:57SPEAKER_00: And the reason before we, you know, at the way beginning, I was talking about my episode last week is because you know, J Knight's focus has been on the municipalities and some of the costs associated with all the red tape that happens locally that we have more control over, that we can have some influence on our local communities to make some changes locally on some of those added costs and everything.
- 4:18SPEAKER_00: But man, it sure feels like when you get into tariffs and you get into interest rates and you get into inflation, that we just don't have much control over that.
- 4:29SPEAKER_00: What are your thoughts on this in general from the lumber tariff concept?
- 4:33SPEAKER_00: And then just like, what about all these things that are impacting us from really that macro top level that we don't have a lot of control over?
- 4:41SPEAKER_01: What's fascinating about lumber is that the U.S.
- 4:44SPEAKER_01: has gotten more lumber than it can possibly use.
- 4:46SPEAKER_01: We have a glut of softwood lumber.
- 4:49SPEAKER_01: Problem is we don't have sawmill capacity to process it.
- 4:52SPEAKER_01: So if you go across the south and the southeast, there's an enormous amount of lumber.
- 4:57SPEAKER_01: Also, you go to the northwest, same scenario.
- 4:59SPEAKER_01: More than we can possibly use.
- 5:02SPEAKER_01: But we don't have the sawmill capacity.
- 5:04SPEAKER_01: So that's a really interesting one.
- 5:06SPEAKER_01: You know, you look at guys like Mark Cuban that wanted to go do the uh, you know, the drug thing so we could make, you know, the drugs for much cheaper and a tiny fraction of the cost, and it really impacts people.
- 5:17SPEAKER_01: Somebody could put some money together and build some sawmills, and we could definitely chase lumber costs down, for sure, guaranteed.
- 5:24SPEAKER_01: So it's an interesting one.
- 5:25SPEAKER_01: I just don't know if there's money to go chase after it, because I think that the the handful of people who control those existing sawmills, they know that if they keep supply, I mean, it's like the beers with the diamonds, right?
- 5:39SPEAKER_01: If they keep supply controlled, then there is an artificial, there's an artificial price floor.
- 5:46SPEAKER_01: And that's kind of how it looks like with lumber, because we've got more lumber than we can use, but we don't have it hitting it.
- 5:52SPEAKER_01: This is going into the marketplace in a way that will positively affect the price because they know if they keep it controlled, they make more money.
- 5:59SPEAKER_00: One thing I just was I was just thinking about something with these tariffs, too, that um I remember seeing an article about this.
- 6:07SPEAKER_00: I didn't prepare it for this, but I just it just uh something that just came to me.
- 6:12SPEAKER_00: There was some articles about how billions of dollars in tariff relief or tariff refunds were paid out to some really large corporations.
- 6:20SPEAKER_00: And so that's another thing that really it bothers me because the whole thought and concept is that these tariffs are generating all this money for the people, for the American people.
- 6:30SPEAKER_00: And then I don't know about all of you listening in right now, but did you get tariff refund checks for all the tariffs that have been paid?
- 6:37SPEAKER_00: Uh, chances are you probably did not get those.
- 6:40SPEAKER_01: Right.
- 6:41SPEAKER_01: But think about this the prices went up to adjust for the tariffs.
- 6:46SPEAKER_01: So the average consumer paid that corporation more money for the tariffs.
- 6:51SPEAKER_01: Now, because they're not gonna, they're not just gonna say, oh, well, we'll just we'll just make less money.
- 6:56SPEAKER_01: It's okay.
- 6:56SPEAKER_01: That's not how that works.
- 6:57SPEAKER_01: They raised the prices to accommodate the tariffs.
- 7:00SPEAKER_01: Now the tariff money came back.
- 7:02SPEAKER_01: That just goes in the pocket.
- 7:04SPEAKER_01: It's not like they send that back down the chain anywhere or like, oh, we'll do a little sale and you know, let everybody else participate.
- 7:09SPEAKER_01: No way.
- 7:10SPEAKER_01: No way.
- 7:10SPEAKER_01: So it's a it more dollars just shifted up, is really all that was.
- 7:15SPEAKER_00: Yeah, and prices definitely did not come down.
- 7:18SPEAKER_00: So I mean it's prices are staying where they're at and they'll continue to go up.
- 7:20SPEAKER_00: They just don't, prices never go back down to where they were.
- 7:23SPEAKER_01: Rarely, right?
- 7:24SPEAKER_01: Once people get used to spinning a number, just keep that number.
- 7:28SPEAKER_00: Exactly.
- 7:29SPEAKER_01: Or go up.
- 7:29SPEAKER_01: Like you don't you don't ever see it come down.
- 7:31SPEAKER_01: So yeah, I I think that I it'd be really interesting.
- 7:34SPEAKER_01: We could probably have AI do a test on this, you know, batch of consumer goods and see what has consumer goods pricing done and kind of graph that with the tariffs and see like I bet they didn't come down.
- 7:47SPEAKER_01: I bet they went up with the tariffs, and I bet they stayed mostly up.
- 7:51SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I bet you're right.
- 7:52SPEAKER_00: That would be interesting to look at.
- 7:53SPEAKER_00: Well, we'll we'll keep an eye on this and and everything else.
- 7:56SPEAKER_00: But yeah, tariffs are one of those things outside of our control of what we can do, but they definitely have an impact on our industry.
- 8:01SPEAKER_00: So yeah, we'll we'll see how this plays out and uh if in October it is reduced from that 45% to about 35%, but it's still gonna hit the industry.
- 8:10SPEAKER_00: Well, let's go ahead and move on to the next segment, which is from the comments.
- 8:14SPEAKER_00: We have one here from LinkedIn from Bill Ray.
- 8:19SPEAKER_00: His comment reads Observation, if all the comprehensive plans, zoning codes, and additional land development regulations we followed for the past 50 years are truly right, in quotes, and ensure good, also in quotes, development, why are we facing more social and infrastructure failures than ever experienced before?
- 8:39SPEAKER_00: So this was a comment that was left on one of the, I think from the episode with uh, I think the last episode with Jay Knight, he left this on there where we were talking about some of the impacts that the municipalities are having with their planning and their requirements and the red tape and everything, and that it isn't truly leading to, you know, the the benefits that they say it's supposed to lead to.
- 9:01SPEAKER_00: So uh definitely hear you on that comment, Bill.
- 9:03SPEAKER_00: All right, well, let's go ahead and move on to article number two, which comes to us from Builder Magazine, a Zonda report inside of Builder Magazine.
- 9:12SPEAKER_00: Headline reads New home sales slip and builders keep leaning on incentives.
- 9:18SPEAKER_00: From this article, new home sales fell 4.2% from May, but we're still up 1.8% from a year ago.
- 9:25SPEAKER_00: 63% of new home communities are offering incentives on to be built homes.
- 9:31SPEAKER_00: 80% of communities are offering incentives on quick move-in homes.
- 9:35SPEAKER_00: That yearly sales gain is coming mostly from more open communities and heavier discounting, not stronger demand.
- 9:42SPEAKER_00: On pricing last month, 21% of builders cut prices, 63% held flat, and 16% raised.
- 9:51SPEAKER_00: Entry level prices slipped 0.6% to$315,676.
- 9:57SPEAKER_00: Move up rose 1.1% to$513,669, and high-end rose 5.3% to$945,765.
- 10:09SPEAKER_00: I had to look up what each of those actually meant and how they were defined.
- 10:12SPEAKER_00: There's not a great definition for them, but what I found is that entry level equates to first-time buyers.
- 10:18SPEAKER_00: It's the lowest price band that Zonda has.
- 10:20SPEAKER_00: Move up is repeat buyers that are trading up to a new home.
- 10:24SPEAKER_00: Uh, the middle band and then the high end is luxury affluent buyers, the top band.
- 10:28SPEAKER_00: And I guess the thing that stood out to me here is just that entry level price is just still so high.
- 10:33SPEAKER_00: And it's a number that I don't think most real people who want to buy their first home can afford.
- 10:40SPEAKER_00: I don't know that that is gonna change much, but hey, the tariffs on lumber is$10,000, which could maybe get that down to a lower number.
- 10:48SPEAKER_00: And then a lot of the the costs coming from the cities and everything could maybe help that number get down as well.
- 10:54SPEAKER_00: But uh, what are your thoughts on this, Charles, when you you see some of these numbers?
- 10:57SPEAKER_01: Well, like a lot of stuff that we see, we're lumping a bunch of different things into a metric.
- 11:03SPEAKER_01: A we're pooling a lot of different elements.
- 11:07SPEAKER_01: And what appears to be the case in the research that I did is that we've got the larger homes, let's say a million plus or approaching a million plus, those are still going up.
- 11:17SPEAKER_01: And so we've got around a 4% price increase year over year with those.
- 11:22SPEAKER_01: And then we've got that move up product, kind of the middle range of housing, uh, have been essentially flat.
- 11:27SPEAKER_01: Those have stayed flat.
- 11:28SPEAKER_01: And then we've got the price of the uh call it, affordable or first buyer home, those have dropped a few, a few points.
- 11:39SPEAKER_01: So we're certainly seeing margin compression on the lower end and some of the middle end, but not on the higher end.
- 11:46SPEAKER_01: What appears to be the case here is that whereas last year builders were were typically doing, you know, they were doing lots of advertising on the incentives.
- 11:56SPEAKER_01: Now it's less about throwing the incentives in your face, but they're still using them.
- 12:00SPEAKER_01: They're you, but they're they're deploying them in a little bit different way.
- 12:03SPEAKER_01: So I think that's probably just a learning curve there where they've got a little bit smarter and realize that you don't have to lead with the incentive, but you probably need to use the incentive to get the deal closed.
- 12:12SPEAKER_01: So that's a little bit of a nuance that I think is interesting.
- 12:15SPEAKER_01: But certainly there's a significant bifurcation across those three types of housing.
- 12:21SPEAKER_01: And we definitely see the higher-end buyer who is less sensitive to the rate, less sensitive to the price, less sensitive to all these elements.
- 12:29SPEAKER_01: That's where the uh the margins are still staying pretty healthy.
- 12:32SPEAKER_01: And again, I think we've talked about a thousand times, there are some regional elements here as well.
- 12:37SPEAKER_01: We can't just dump this all into, you know, the national housing market.
- 12:42SPEAKER_01: So the the ones that are interesting, I thought, were um Vegas and Raleigh.
- 12:47SPEAKER_01: So the Raleigh Durham market was a post-pandemic boom market, and it's dropping dramatically.
- 12:54SPEAKER_01: So interesting there.
- 12:55SPEAKER_01: You've still got some other metros that are booming.
- 12:57SPEAKER_01: Uh Utah continues to be be big.
- 12:59SPEAKER_01: Salt Lake City is up a lot, um, LA actually is up, and then Cincinnati of all places.
- 13:06SPEAKER_01: So definitely you've got you've got some unevenness across the different regions.
- 13:10SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I'm glad you brought that up about the the regional differences.
- 13:14SPEAKER_00: That's obviously a number that goes across the United States.
- 13:16SPEAKER_00: So it it is different in different markets.
- 13:19SPEAKER_00: So thanks for adding that to it.
- 13:20SPEAKER_01: But overall, overall.
- 13:22SPEAKER_01: There is no there's no dire situation, there's no horrible, you know, crash or anything like that that's happening.
- 13:29SPEAKER_01: But it is just a little bit tougher.
- 13:31SPEAKER_01: It is average, maybe we would say average, not distressed.
- 13:35SPEAKER_01: I don't think there's anything that tells us that that the market is distressed.
- 13:38SPEAKER_01: It would be moving faster, and there would be there would be a better than average performance, likely, if interest rates were lower.
- 13:45SPEAKER_01: I think we can all we can all point to that.
- 13:47SPEAKER_01: But it the current rates are becoming the new normal, and people are just realizing, hey, this is just, it is what it is.
- 13:53SPEAKER_01: And if I want to do something, I have to, I have to make a move, and there's less waiting.
- 13:57SPEAKER_01: Whereas there were other points over the last couple of years where people thought that, hey, a rate, a rate cut's coming, so I'll just wait until then.
- 14:04SPEAKER_01: But I think people have realized now it's not coming.
- 14:08SPEAKER_01: So if you were sitting on the sidelines waiting on the rate cut, it's not coming.
- 14:12SPEAKER_01: Uh, not likely soon.
- 14:13SPEAKER_01: And in fact, it might even go up.
- 14:14SPEAKER_01: So you should probably do something.
- 14:16SPEAKER_01: So I think that is probably that is probably going to continue to be the MO.
- 14:21SPEAKER_00: Well, let's go ahead and shift into our third and final article here, which comes to us from the Ion Housing blog from the National Association of Home Builders.
- 14:30SPEAKER_00: Headline reads: the 10 biggest builders now control nearly 80% of the largest markets.
- 14:37SPEAKER_00: From this article, the 10 biggest builders control 78.9% of new home permits across the 50 largest markets.
- 14:44SPEAKER_00: That is down just slightly from 79.3% in 2024.
- 14:48SPEAKER_00: So concentration is holding near record highs.
- 14:51SPEAKER_00: Nationally, the top 10 builders accounted for 43.6% of all new single-family homes closed in 2025.
- 14:58SPEAKER_00: Most concentrated market is Tucson at 99.5%.
- 15:02SPEAKER_00: The least concentrated market is Nashville at 53.4%.
- 15:06SPEAKER_00: Miami jumped 16.9 points to 89.3%, one of the biggest shifts toward the large b largest builders.
- 15:14SPEAKER_00: Philadelphia moved the other way down 18.2 points to 69.3%, and Atlanta fell 13.4 points to 63.4%.
- 15:23SPEAKER_00: Richmond sits near the top at 91.3%, while Salt Lake City is one of the lowest at 58.2%.
- 15:31SPEAKER_00: So what stood out to me with these numbers, Charles, is probably, I think I just asked the question of, you know, when I'm looking at this, I'm like, is this good?
- 15:39SPEAKER_00: Is it bad?
- 15:40SPEAKER_00: Like, what do we think when we see the consolidation of a lot of these builders and them having such a large control over the number of you know homes that are built in the United States?
- 15:53SPEAKER_00: You know, what are your thoughts on that?
- 15:55SPEAKER_00: And when you see some of these numbers?
- 15:57SPEAKER_01: Well, it's the American way.
- 16:00SPEAKER_01: That's what we do.
- 16:01SPEAKER_01: We we have a few companies that find success, and um amongst the success, they find access to capital.
- 16:07SPEAKER_01: And with that access to capital, they have an unending desire to grow and get bigger.
- 16:13SPEAKER_01: And the handful that can pull that off get bigger and bigger and bigger.
- 16:17SPEAKER_01: And we see it with autos, and we see it with food, we see it with housing.
- 16:22SPEAKER_01: It is the inevitability in the way that we've built our society.
- 16:27SPEAKER_01: And scale makes it very tough for the smaller at Walmart.
- 16:32SPEAKER_01: I mean, you just can take grocery, you can just go down the list of all the things where bigger has proven to be I wouldn't say better, but proven to be the way that it's going to go, like it or not.
- 16:43SPEAKER_01: So I don't think that there's anything we can do here to fix it.
- 16:48SPEAKER_01: I mean, you look at the list, telecom, beer, the steel industry, airlines.
- 16:58SPEAKER_01: I mean, the list goes on and on.
- 17:00SPEAKER_01: It's always the same.
- 17:02SPEAKER_01: Get bigger, find efficiencies with size, the top ten essentially rule the world in all of those industries that I mentioned.
- 17:11SPEAKER_01: In some cases, it's less.
- 17:12SPEAKER_01: Sometimes it's the top two or three or four.
- 17:15SPEAKER_01: And at great levels of consolidation, to the point where then the they reach a point basically they get as big as they can get before the government finally says, okay, okay, okay, that's enough.
- 17:26SPEAKER_01: You guys need to chill.
- 17:28SPEAKER_01: We we can't have any more, we can't have any more of this consolidation.
- 17:32SPEAKER_01: But you can get pretty extreme before that ever happens.
- 17:36SPEAKER_00: Do you think one thing uh again, this was brought up, and I I keep referencing this last podcast episode, but it was brought up on there about if if some of these cities had made it easier for builders to build and it was more realistic for them to build housing that more people could afford, do you think that would open the door to more builders, more smaller local builders to come in and actually play in this space?
- 18:04SPEAKER_00: Versus right now, it feels like the reason these larger builders are getting bigger and taking up more of it is because they have such scale that they can weather the storm and they can deal with a lot of the the uh red tape that happens in some of these cities and everything.
- 18:21SPEAKER_00: Um, what do you think about that?
- 18:23SPEAKER_01: That's it.
- 18:23SPEAKER_01: That is it.
- 18:24SPEAKER_01: They have the ability to weather the storm.
- 18:27SPEAKER_01: And and there there's no way to deny that there are some ups and downs in the residential space.
- 18:34SPEAKER_01: It's inevitable.
- 18:36SPEAKER_01: Now, what we're seeing today is that the ups and downs tend to be a little bit smoother in the higher echelons of price point.
- 18:45SPEAKER_01: And that's the only place where you still see those smaller builders that build a handful of homes a year.
- 18:50SPEAKER_01: You can still do that in the million plus range.
- 18:53SPEAKER_01: And that's something that that a small builder can still do.
- 18:57SPEAKER_01: But if you look at 50, 70 years ago, there were lots of small builders building entry level and move-up product.
- 19:03SPEAKER_01: And they might build just a handful of houses a year.
- 19:06SPEAKER_01: It's a nice little business for them.
- 19:07SPEAKER_01: They made a nice income.
- 19:09SPEAKER_01: It was essentially a job, but it was a business, it was a job, and they were happy.
- 19:14SPEAKER_01: They could control their time a little bit, and it's a pretty good living, to be honest.
- 19:19SPEAKER_01: And I hear those stories from guys that did it back in the day, and they were very happy.
- 19:24SPEAKER_01: They loved their job, their business, which was their job.
- 19:27SPEAKER_01: You know, they were they were out there on the site every day.
- 19:30SPEAKER_01: You know, my my early days in construction were this as well.
- 19:32SPEAKER_01: I was doing residential construction a few at a time.
- 19:35SPEAKER_01: And it's very tough to do now.
- 19:37SPEAKER_01: It's just almost impossible to do unless you're in that million plus price point.
- 19:43SPEAKER_01: So do I ever see it being possible to go back?
- 19:46SPEAKER_01: Is there anything that a city could do from a regulatory standpoint to make it easier?
- 19:52SPEAKER_01: Even if they did, it's still this pricing element of the efficiencies that the DR Hortons and the Lenars have that the guy doing 10 or 20 or 30 homes a year can never get.
- 20:04SPEAKER_01: It's tough.
- 20:06SPEAKER_00: Well, any uh final thoughts on anything industry related before we we wrap up today?
- 20:12SPEAKER_00: That's all I got.
- 20:13SPEAKER_00: All right, guys.
- 20:14SPEAKER_00: Well, that is all for this episode.
- 20:17SPEAKER_00: Short and sweet.
- 20:19SPEAKER_00: If you're not already subscribed, please click that button.
- 20:21SPEAKER_00: We'd love to have you back for the next one.
- 20:23SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, we will talk to you all tomorrow on our next video.