Market Opportunities…….Don’t Miss Them!
The businesses that are dependent on the availability of qualified home buyers for their market base need to be looking past immediate market conditions toward available opportunities. In my own metropolitan area, I have dozens of clients that are qualified for homes in the $125,000 to $225,000 price range. Yet with the area’s property shortages, there are precious few available and no new construction of consequence.
Whether interest rates go up or not, there are currently large numbers of qualified buyers in the marketplace which are underserved. Without new construction in their price range and housing shortages in many markets, they have few buying options. In order to continue their success of recent years, businesses in the homebuilding industry should look at these market opportunties as the source for future growth.
Large suburban home building firms can drive many aspects of the market and increase prices at will. Smaller builders often try to compete. The problem…………most times they can’t. Their answer……………find different market, fill another niche.
Look at the mortgage industry. Lenders found that they have to offer more loan choices to a larger selection of borrowers in order to maintain the volume they needed to be successful. Builders need to think the same way. Sometimes local governments will require builders to build homes in specific price ranges within a given area versus allowing the builder to build at whatever price the market will bear.
Without this type of direction, in many areas of the country, the builders drive the market and the prices. They would do well to take a page from the lenders’ books, and offer a wider variety of housing options for a broader range of homebuyers.
Americans want to own homes……………….it’s part of the American dream! There are more lending options and, therefore, more qualified buyers than ever before. Builders, large and small, should realize that their long-term success is more secure if they meet the needs of those buyers.