For the April 2020 NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index survey, an additional question provided builder respondents with a choice of eight possible measures in response to the COVID-19 pandemic and asked which ones they were doing, planning to do, or not doing at all.
The vast majority of builders, 84%, said that they were allowing their non-construction employees to work from home. Fifty-nine percent are pivoting or planning to pivot to private showings of model homes in order to continue home sales under social distancing measures.
Significant numbers are also offering online closings or other services (46%) and offering drive-through closings or other services (34%). All of these are attempts to keep selling homes while adhering to a form of social distancing.
Consistent with the decline in housing starts reported yesterday, 48% of builders are halting construction in some or all projects…. A significantly smaller 25% are laying off or furloughing employees. What happens to these percentages in the future depends on the duration of the virus-induced shutdowns, of course, as well as the effectiveness of policies to mitigate the shutdowns’ effects.
