Well, at least the new homes are selling. Sort of.
Volatile government data released on Thursday suggested Americans found their way into newly-built single-family residences at the quickest pace since December last month. Consensus was looking for a slowdown versus July’s pace.
“Quick” is a relative term here. 684,000 (the annual rate for August) remained in a range that’s held since early-2023. Historically, that’s a middling pace. Much better than recessions, but nowhere near boom territory.
As the chart text indicates, August’s 6.4% increase was almost surely the result of builders cutting prices and offering incentives to help buyers make the math work.
September’s abysmal report on builder sentiment showed nearly one in four builders cut prices early this month, up from 35% in August. Fully two thirds resorted to sales incentives, up from 63% last month and the highest since December.
The median new home sale price spent a second month below $400,000 in August, Thursday’s government report showed.
As the figure shows, the YoY drop was the seventh in eight months. It was also the largest since last summer.
This marks the first time since 2021 — which is to say the first time since the post-pandemic run up — that the median new home price was below $400,000 for two straight months. At $478,700, the average price was the second-lowest in five years.
With overall prices (i.e., including the resale market, where most sales take place) still climbing, these figures make a strong case for buying new construction.
That is of course if you can stomach the new “aesthetic,” which is a stone veneer front with vinyl on the sides and back in lower-priced neighborhoods and some version of a $750,000 Hardie Board and grey brick “modern farm house” in upper-tier communities.
I realize the housing stock varies by region, but in my city I would far rather buy an old house than a new construction house of equivalent price. The old house will be more desirably located, larger, more attractive, on a larger lot with trees, or all of the above.
Yes, this is me
I cannot stomach that shit lol
I used to live in a Cape Cod style home built in the 1930s. Wood floors throughout, wooden stairs, built-in cabinetry, lath and plaster walls, hinged iron casement windows, and two swinging doors on either side of the kitchen. They don’t even try to build them like that anymore.
Yeah, I’ve mentioned this previously, but the idea of a “custom”-built home today is anachronistic. Today’s “custom” builds aren’t pure custom, even the ones that are multi-million-dollar homes. They’re more like, “Ok, Mr. and Mrs. Johnson, I see you’re rich, here’s this floor plan / model and you can expand it and spend as much as you want on the finishes.” That’s something entirely different from “No, I want to work with an architect, then a structural engineer, then I want to pick each subcontractor so I can be sure that my cabinets and crown molding are hewn by a real carpenter, my shower tiled by someone who’d rather die than have imperfect grout lines and the paver stones for my patio imported from Italy and placed personally by Francesco, whose plane ticket I’ll buy.” I mean, the latter home would cost you $10 million today and it’d take years to build, even if it was only 2,000 square feet. I don’t even know that you could find enough of those kind of subs in most areas to get the job done. I know I couldn’t in either of the places I live.
I mean, obviously that sort of attention to detail would’ve cost you a ton of money in any era, but my point is that today, I don’t think you could even get it done. Not unless you were in LA or Miami or somewhere like that. If I woke up tomorrow and said, “I think I want to replace all of my kitchen cabinets with cabinets handmade by an actual carpenter (forget whether that carpenter’s any kind of legend in the field), I don’t think I could find one. And even if I could, I imagine the cost would be astronomical. I can’t imagine going through that for every part of a new build in 2026. I don’t think it’s feasible even for a family with, say, a $4 million build budget in a relatively low-cost locale.
Take a look at this —> https://heisenbergreport.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/09/TNBuild.png
So that’s a ~$3.5 million build in upper-east Tennessee. It is not pure custom. You can tell just by looking at it. It’s a modified, upsized, “all the fixins” version of some model that’s probably called “modern masterpiece” (or something) in the builder’s pitch book. I’d bet a nice set of cabinets that most, if not all, of the subs who work on that house are the same subs working on far, far cheaper homes in the same area.
I agree 100%. My house was in L.A., and I still struggled to find competent craftsmen — ones I could actually trust — to do any work of the work on my home. As a result, I had to do much of the work myself — painting, plastering, and door/window repairs in particular. I found one guy who could do custom, hanging, lead-welded rain gutters, and he went out of business shortly after completing my job. I also struggled to find roofers who could competently handle eye-brow dormers. I did find a great plumber who once replaced a nearly 100-year-old, cast iron, five-way sewer fitting for me — inside of a wall mind you– like it was nothing. I kept him on speed dial and checked in with him from time to time — just to see how he was doing — for nearly 20-years.
I farm in the San Joaquin Valley, CA. I pay $8.50/gallon of diesel. ICE/anti-immigrate policies have driven up costs (at the lower, middle and professional end) in multiple industries.
Instead of the trickle down nonsense, we really have the MAGA trickle up hypothesis (tariffs, war, oil & thus inflation). That’s a costs for every business (how do you pencil that out?) thus everyone.
My two cents on nonsense.
https://share.google/images/sQq2LTuBRJwdV473X