‘Twas two eves ere ‘eighteen, and o’er home-building’s land
Hang three blights on supply ‘midst strong waves of demand;
Pro formas and models call for two to three more good years,
But beyond 2020, the path disappears;
Yogi Berra once quipped that predicting is tough,
When it comes to the future, as now’s quite hard enough;
Will recovery’s cycle take a downward direction?
One might only guess when we reach that inflexion.
Will rising rates, stubborn take-home wages and debt,
Collar this rebound ere it hits full-stride yet?
That call is for experts, pundits, observers, and mavens
Not such as us, for whom crystal-balling offers no safe havens.
All the hardhats are hung in the locked double-wides,
All the ladders lay neatly in rows on their sides;
As builders, developers, supervisors, and crews,
Rest clipboards, nail guns and Skilsaws for a brief winter’s snooze.
Yet, in the trailing 12-moons, North, South, East or West,
It was a year of good progress, but far from the best;
For reasons you’ve all heard, vicious circles unending,
3 villains oft referred to as lots, labor, and lending;
Each played as a spoiler, thwarting ‘most every builder
With VPOs and delays, they ever lurk and bewilder;
Making it harder to permit, develop, and build,
No matter how needed; no matter how skilled.
The triple-threat starts with commissions and mayors
Who count new housing units as answers to prayers;
Like to hear themselves speak of planning, zoning and code,
With unanimous yeas on who’ll fund the new school and road.
For, every new-home dollar spent across the great nation,
Means a quarter gets taken for some regulation;
Whether local, or county, or state, or you name it,
It’s a fee for somebody’s coffers—any way you frame it.
Next culprit is capital lending, with an upper-case C,
Which governs what builders invest in AC&D
So, debt- and equity-funded publics get competitors’ edge,
While, the rest—SOL—get shoved to the ledge;
And now comes the hard part, securing more new lots,
In fiercely-fought markets, ‘tween haves and have-nots;
And privates reach deep for personally-guaranteed loans;
As the market moves ever closer to the land of unknowns.
As if it’s not hard enough to access finance and sites,
The cause of many a builder’s most sleepless nights
Is whether or not the right trades will show up,
And if not, will the year-end delivery schedule blow up?
And odd it may be, peopling builder’s fond dreams,
Slab-pourers, framers, roofers, and dry-walling teams;
Plumbers and painters and the finishing trade,
On time and on-budget, nary mistakes being made.
While lots, labor, and lending are the stuff of nightmares,
Each a scarce resource, each king of cares;
Without one and all, builders can’t do what they do,
Otherwise they are doomed just to sit there and stew.
But one of the root causes of too-rare inventory,
Can be looked at as heroes of this very year’s story;
For, when you remember back just a few years ago,
Assertions and claims among those in the know;
Called for a reset of the great American Dream,
With homeownership’s end, or so it would seem;
So, home builders can find cause for great exultation
in millennials’ clear choice not to make America “rental nation.”
