Almost every chart to do with the US housing market looks a bit the same right now — up and to the right (see mortgage rates from last week).
Indeed, fresh data out yesterday showed US house prices rising 18.8% in 2021, which is the biggest increase in 34 years of data. So what do you do when everyone needs a house? You build houses.
The good news for anyone looking for a house is that government data shows that more than 1.5 million housing units are currently under construction in the US — the most since the 1970s.
Once on the market, that inventory should help to redress the supply-demand imbalance... if the houses can get finished.
In a housing gold rush, sell garage doors
Raw material shortages and supply chain hiccups have made building houses hard. Lumber prices have soared, concrete and cement have seen record demand and glass windows were cited as a sore spot for 63% of home builders in October. But nothing has been quite as absurd as the shortage in garage doors, as reported by the NYTimes.
A shortage of garage doors has been holding up inspections and completions all over the country, with some home builders now ordering garage doors before they even start building a house. As Brookfield Properties CEO Adrian Foley said: “It used to take us 20 weeks to build a house... now it takes us 20 weeks to get a set of garage doors".
