Everyone wants to figure out where the housing market is and where it’s going in the next year. More than 400 people gathered in Dana Point, California, for Zonda’s Builder 100 conference, looking for some insight on what exactly may be going on. Here are some of the most thought-provoking quotes from Day 1.
“The initial reaction when you see housing starts down is to think it’s bad, but you need to put that in context. There’s been some health returned to the market. People were operating at burnout; suppliers couldn’t keep up. It’s OK to see things come down a little bit.” —Ali Wolf, chief economist, Zonda
“With respect to demographics, we’re seeing a sign of a shift not just for us on the for sale side but also in the early days of build-to-rent. If we go back 24 months, probably 75% of buyers were Caucasian. Today that’s half, and it continues to decline. It’s not a changing demographic—it’s already changed. I think, as builders of for-sale and rent, we are appealing to what this demographic wants—how they live, how we talk to these folks, the community layout. I’m not sure we’ve ever seen a shift quite so quickly.” —Sheryl Palmer, chairman and CEO, Taylor Morrison
“When you think about demographic shifts, buyers today in any industry—but certainly with the biggest purchase made in their lifetime—they want relations, they want stories, they want brand stories, they want magic, and that’s putting a ton of pressure on brands everywhere to deliver at that magnitude.” —Antonia J.A. Hock, CEO, Antonia J.A. Hock & Associates
“How will commercial real estate shifts affect housing? We don’t know what will happen with work-from-home, and that’s critical to where people want houses. If it’s five days a week in the office, Manhattan and San Francisco look way better. I doubt that happens. On the other hand, I’m very suspicious of those who think we’ll all work from home all of the time. The office market isn’t going to recover to where it was in 2019, but it’s not as bad as some people were expecting. I think people like going to work—especially young people—they want to go into the office to learn and get the attention you can only get by going to the office. I think we’ll be 80% back to where we were.” —Richard Green, director, University of Southern California Lusk Center for Real Estate
“We are excited about looking at the acquisition over the last years of tracts of land where we can do [both for-sale and build-to-rent]. I feel for-rent and for-sale can cohabitate together on the same tract of land. It makes us a better land buyer. We really envision going forward being able to create communities where you drive in and one section is single-family for-rent and for-sale—probably on multiple lot sizes all within the same community that is sharing amenities.” —Nelson Mitchell, CEO, HistoryMaker Homes
