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A bit misleading. New Privately Owned Housing Units Started have merely bounced back to an already suppressed market from the Great Recession housing bubble cra

A bit misleading. New Privately Owned Housing Units Started have merely bounced back to an already suppressed market from the Great Recession housing bubble crash which hit all-time lows. [1] Growth is good, return to baseline is good, but this was already a largely suppressed market. Housing supply needs to improve much more than this to be a major indicator of growth. We are currently at 1982 and 1991 levels. New Privately Owned Housing Units starts are at all time lows historically on average, again largely from the Great Recession. Good news, but not some massive gain. [1] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HOUST https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/HOUST

wheelerwj 6y ago
still, who the fuck is buying these houses?
- JacKTrocinskI 6y ago
  Engineers and other well paid professionals.
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  People who need somewhere to live? Not sure what you’re asking?
- adventured 6y ago
  The vast majority of median and higher income earners have been untouched by the economic damage from the pandemic. Those are the prime home buyers and they still have their jobs and purchasing power intact. The Covid recession is not a normal recession and it's nothing like the great recession (which widely hit jobs in every economic tier). Now they're being handed record low mortgage rates, which is prompting the buying.
  - throwanem 6y ago
    > The vast majority of median and higher income earners have been untouched by the economic damage from the pandemic. So far.
    - adventured 6y ago
      The economy is rather aggressively recovering. Unless the US has to do a full lockdown again, it's likely to continue to recover gradually. That makes sense given the recession was induced by a forced shutdown, it wasn't caused by eg the business cycle or the crash of an epic asset bubble (as in the great recession). There is no great reason to think median and higher income jobs will be hammered while the economy is in recovery mode (and lower income job openings are also soaring). The US is back up to 5.8 million job openings, up from around 5 million at the bottom. By contrast, at the bottom of the great recession there were only ~2.3 million job openings. This recession has been a far weaker hit to the overall job market, very sharp and short as one would expect from a temporary forced shutdown. Americans are finally doing what they should have been doing months ago - wearing masks, social distancing better, being more pragmatic regarding the pandemic, which has resulted in the case numbers being cut in half from the peak five weeks ago (along with a correlating large plunge in hospitalizations). If people ingrain that behavior, it'll be very helpful through the Winter, when the Covid mortality rate is likely to spike higher (ie it may help avoid another full lockdown, better bridging the economy from here to a vaccine). There is an old quip (possibly incorrectly attributed to Winston Churchill) about Americans eventually doing the right thing after trying everything else, that appears to again apply with the pandemic.
      - chiefalchemist 6y ago
        > There is no great reason to think median and higher income jobs will be hammered while the economy is in recovery mode (and lower income job openings are also soaring). That's a big brush statement considering we've never done a shutdown like this before. Sure, it can inch back but consumer confidence is essential. It's difficult to imagine confidence growing when approx half the population is going to be sold a vision of unrest, distrust, mismanagement, and so on. A self-fulfilling prophecy isn't out of the question.
      - puranjay 6y ago
        I'm bullish on the economy. Outside of tourism and live entertainment, I don't see any industry taking a massive hit. I'd even say that tourism will bounce back much faster than expectations. Over the last few weeks, I've realized that people are okay with the risk in exchange for getting back their normal lives. Six months into the pandemic, it's also clear that while it is serious, it isn't the civilization ending pandemic we initially thought it was.
- hadlock 6y ago
  People in their mid-30s who put off having kids and buying a house because they couldn't afford it until just now. Bunch of people born 1982-1986 are just now putting their lives together after riding out 2008. The 1984/5 years were an especially large class. People 1982/3 are just now starting to age out of their prime childbearing years ("biological clock").
  - shwoopdiwoop 6y ago
    1984 here and buying. Spot on!
  - Frost1x 6y ago
    I was quoted on a 30 year fixed rate mortgage at 2.62% APR with no pre-payment penalty (locked in at the mortage dip). Plan to pay it off in a fraction of the time, but it gives quite a safety net at such a low rate I couldn't pass it up. 15 year mortgages were even lower (2.38% APR at the time) but I didn't want to gamble too much with COVID uncertainties (for all we know this pandemic could ride on 2-5 years). If you're fairly financially solid and looking at real-estate, it's not a terrible time. My agent also offered a COVID plan free which declares my agent's agency will re-list and resell the property for me at no cost should I desire within one year (obviously, I'd lose any difference in value should the the market value decline, but if things get truly nasty, I can likely bounce out before the market adapts given how quick sell turnover rates are here). No closing costs would be charged under this case (obviously any require renovations would be my liability). I should add that my mortage will be less than what I'm currently paying in rent... and in pretty solid tech hub that isn't SF.
    - jdhn 6y ago
      Damn, 2.62%? That's absolutely nuts. Makes me think I should look into buying a house...
      - brlewis 6y ago
        That's not for sure. Low interest rates drive prices up or prop prices up. To find the ideal time to buy you have to know the future: if rates are higher than they're going to be, you can buy at a lower price now and then refinance when rates drop. Of course, knowing if/when rates are going to drop is the hard part.
- ghaff 6y ago
  The people with money who are leaving big cities permanently. (At least some of whom would have done so anyway but pretty much anyone who was contemplating such a move in the next five years and can do so is pushing up the timetable.)
  - chiefalchemist 6y ago
    If supply isn't there It'll be interesting to see if demand waits, or returns to its status quo. I live in central NJ, approx 75 mins by train from NYC and 60 mins to PHL. There is a small new development in my area of approx 20+ units. Best I can tell, these homes are struggling to be sold.
    - ghaff 6y ago
      I assume, given the apparent amount of new construction, that there are certain patterns in what various groups of buyers are looking for that may not be well-met by current inventory. I assume people moving from the city to the 'burbs and those moving to rural/small town locations possibly 2-3 hours from a big city are fairly distinct groups.
    - lallysingh 6y ago
      I'm in northern NJ, about 50 minutes from NYC (65 to my job). Houses here are selling like crazy. It's a pretty, diverse, liberal area that's bringing in a lot of people leaving NYC/Brooklyn. Both my neighbors sold in the last 3 months.
      - otoburb 6y ago
        >>Both my neighbors sold in the last 3 months. Lots of people leaving, but since their properties sold it also means that people are, by definition, also buying and moving in. The key is not "how many people are leaving" but the net outflow. I think there would be a more serious problem if property owners are trying to leave the city but cannot sell their units. But the property sales volume (i.e. completed closings) seem to be picking up again[1] in the city. [1] https://www.propertyshark.com/Real-Estate-Reports/2020/08/25/nyc-real-estate-covid19/ https://www.propertyshark.com/Real-Estate-Reports/2020/08/25...
- oxymoran 6y ago
  Sounds like you are in some sort of echo chamber where you perceive everyone who isn’t filthy rich as living in poverty.
  - EvanAnderson 6y ago
    I, too, am wondering how people are affording these houses. I'm not "filthy rich", but my income hasn't changed significantly in the last 15 years. I don't know others who feel they have had significant income increases either. OTOH, in my area (semi-rural Ohio) these new houses are costing at least 1.75X (and some _much_ more) what similar houses cost 15 years ago. Stuff that went for $120 - $150K 15 years ago is running north of $250K now.
    - lallysingh 6y ago
      Financing has gotten really cheap. That'll get you more house for your dollar. People have been building equity on their homes the entire time. Those folks who are selling their $150k houses for $250k are buying other houses, further raising demand.
      - jacobush 6y ago
        That gives you more dollars per house, you mean.
        lallysingh 6y ago
        I mean that the folks living in a house that's appreciated a lot may want to cash out their equity, adding another buyer and a bunch of money to the market.
    - AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
      $250k less 10% downpayment assuming 3% interest rate for 30 years yields about $1300 per month payments which is $15600 per year. With median household income in Ohio being around 56k, spending 15k on a house looks affordable.
- rossdavidh 6y ago
  From the article: "The big gains came from the construction of apartments and condominiums, which soared 56.7%. But single-family home construction ticked up, too, by 8.2%." So, nice solid growth in the "buying these houses" part of the sector, but by far bigger growth in the "people need to live somewhere" sector of apartments (which I am guessing is the bigger part of the apts-and-condos segment). Some states stopped construction during the shutdown. Nearly everywhere is now allowing it, so activity surges to catch up. I know of no evidence that births slowed during the shutdown, and the deaths weren't enough to meaningfully impact demand for a place to live. So, it's good news, but ought not to be surprising. Also from the article: "...these are the kind of gains seen after storms/hurricanes" Well, yeah, and the pandemic is in many respects more like a hurricane than it is like an economic recession.
  - throwanem 6y ago
    I wouldn't expect to start seeing evidence for a COVID baby bust, or the lack of one, for a good few months yet. Of obvious necessity, birth rate is about a nine-month trailing indicator.
    - rossdavidh 6y ago
      So, supposedly, widespread power outages lead to measurable baby boomlets, rather than busts. With all outside forms of entertainment closed, I wouldn't count on there being a baby bust at all.
      - throwanem 6y ago
        Intuitively, I'd expect a substantive difference between a "we've just got to get through this and everything is fine" power outage - complete with cookouts! Can't let what's in the freezer go to waste - and the calendar-melting, interpersonally isolated anxiety hell and economic collapse, then un-collapse, then maybe collapse again? of COVID. Power outages also have much precedent in the living memory of the US, crucially including that things really will go back to normal again - while pandemics lack any such cultural familiarity. Just that uncertainty all by itself I'd expect to depress birth rate somewhat, nine months hence. (Not to mention, how do you even social distance in bed with somebody? If you're married or live-in partners, then sure, but I have to figure booty calls have plummeted lately, and that's also not a pattern you'd expect to see in a blackout.) All in all - yeah, people have time on their hands in both cases, but they're not otherwise very comparable, and I feel like, in the much higher-anxiety environment of the latter, it's considerably less likely that people will opt to pass some of that time by boning down - and on top of that, safety measures foreclose a considerable range of opportunities for doing so in the first place. That said, we'll know pretty well one way or the other by probably January or February, so for anyone not trying to front-run the diaper and formula markets, the uncertainty of the moment is probably fairly bearable. Fwiw, some Brookings economists found not wholly dissimilar reason to predict a very measurable bust, along with an interesting aside on rates of conception during and around the various waves of the 1918 flu. I don't know whether I entirely buy their analysis, but it's at least not absurd on its face; make of it what you like. https://www.brookings.edu/research/half-a-million-fewer-children-the-coming-covid-baby-bust/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/half-a-million-fewer-chil...
- malandrew 6y ago
  I just bought as well. Closed in the past month. 2.875% on a 30-year fixed jumbo with no prepayment penalty. It’s our first home. We were planning on waiting for things to bottom out at 12-24 months after the start of the recession and were passively looking. The perfect home came on the market. Super unique. Unlikely to find another one like it. It’s the kind of home that retains value and sells fast due to uniqueness. It was only on the market for less than a week. It’s in Seattle. Massive windows with view of Lake Washington and Rainier and so much privatcy that I can walk around anywhere in the house naked without pulling any blinds. Whether the pandemic rages on and we’re stuck at home or everything springs back to life in downtown Seattle, my partner and I are going to be very comfortable and we have room to start a family or take in my aging father or her nephew once he’s old enough to move out. The calculus for waiting was lowering housing prices but you also need to factor that your rent will be buying your landlord’s home during that time. Two years worth of rent for us was going to be over $120k. If we lose $100k worth of value by buying ~1.5 years early, it’s a wash.
Anon4Now 6y ago
Doesn't seem misleading to me. I think most readers would take it in context of the COVID pandemic, not all time highs. Plus, is pre-Great Recession a good benchmark? That housing market was buoyed by a lot of bad subprime mortgages. Of course it was bigger.
sjg007 6y ago
Huh from my perspective there’s a crap ton of houses being built...
- sjg007 6y ago
  I don’t mean this in a bad way at all. I’m just surprised that it’s a return to normal vs growth. Where I live though you can build with 3% down. I was surprised to see the remaining lots in my development sell out quickly.
vonmoltke 6y ago
What's really misleading, at least based on the comments here, is that this spike was driven by a drastic increase in multi-family (5+ unit) starts. Near the start of the pandemic in the US, these starts hit their highest level since 1985: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=HOUST1F,HOUST5F,HOUST2F https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=HOUST1F,HOUST5F,HOUST2...,
- eli_gottlieb 6y ago
  >What's really misleading, at least based on the comments here, is that this spike was driven by a drastic increase in multi-family (5+ unit) starts. ... so COVID-19 somehow helped the YIMBY movement get apartment buildings permitted for bloody once? This is... great news, albeit without any clear causal connection between one thing and another.
  - inetknght 6y ago
    > apartment buildings permitted > This is... great news No. Apartment buildings are rented. Rent is bad. What would be good would be single family homes being built and sold to people instead of anything being built to extract yet more rent from an already failing middle and lower class. > albeit without any clear causal connection between one thing and another. No clear causal connection? How about more capital available to businesses than basically ever before?
    - jeffbee 6y ago
      > Rent is bad. American brainwashing in action.
      - Breefield 6y ago
        > Eschew flamebait. Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That destroys the curiosity this site exists for.
        6y ago
Fjolsvith 6y ago
Not so. Lumber costs have nearly doubled this last month for my shed manufacturing business, likely due to demand in the home construction market. An 8' 2x4 is currently $5.32, whereas it was $3.12 in July (at Menards in Kearney, Nebraska).

wheelerwj 6y ago

still, who the fuck is buying these houses?

JacKTrocinskI 6y ago
Engineers and other well paid professionals.
chrisseaton 6y ago
People who need somewhere to live? Not sure what you’re asking?
adventured 6y ago
The vast majority of median and higher income earners have been untouched by the economic damage from the pandemic. Those are the prime home buyers and they still have their jobs and purchasing power intact. The Covid recession is not a normal recession and it's nothing like the great recession (which widely hit jobs in every economic tier). Now they're being handed record low mortgage rates, which is prompting the buying.
- throwanem 6y ago
  > The vast majority of median and higher income earners have been untouched by the economic damage from the pandemic. So far.
  - adventured 6y ago
    The economy is rather aggressively recovering. Unless the US has to do a full lockdown again, it's likely to continue to recover gradually. That makes sense given the recession was induced by a forced shutdown, it wasn't caused by eg the business cycle or the crash of an epic asset bubble (as in the great recession). There is no great reason to think median and higher income jobs will be hammered while the economy is in recovery mode (and lower income job openings are also soaring). The US is back up to 5.8 million job openings, up from around 5 million at the bottom. By contrast, at the bottom of the great recession there were only ~2.3 million job openings. This recession has been a far weaker hit to the overall job market, very sharp and short as one would expect from a temporary forced shutdown. Americans are finally doing what they should have been doing months ago - wearing masks, social distancing better, being more pragmatic regarding the pandemic, which has resulted in the case numbers being cut in half from the peak five weeks ago (along with a correlating large plunge in hospitalizations). If people ingrain that behavior, it'll be very helpful through the Winter, when the Covid mortality rate is likely to spike higher (ie it may help avoid another full lockdown, better bridging the economy from here to a vaccine). There is an old quip (possibly incorrectly attributed to Winston Churchill) about Americans eventually doing the right thing after trying everything else, that appears to again apply with the pandemic.
    - chiefalchemist 6y ago
      > There is no great reason to think median and higher income jobs will be hammered while the economy is in recovery mode (and lower income job openings are also soaring). That's a big brush statement considering we've never done a shutdown like this before. Sure, it can inch back but consumer confidence is essential. It's difficult to imagine confidence growing when approx half the population is going to be sold a vision of unrest, distrust, mismanagement, and so on. A self-fulfilling prophecy isn't out of the question.
    - puranjay 6y ago
      I'm bullish on the economy. Outside of tourism and live entertainment, I don't see any industry taking a massive hit. I'd even say that tourism will bounce back much faster than expectations. Over the last few weeks, I've realized that people are okay with the risk in exchange for getting back their normal lives. Six months into the pandemic, it's also clear that while it is serious, it isn't the civilization ending pandemic we initially thought it was.
hadlock 6y ago
People in their mid-30s who put off having kids and buying a house because they couldn't afford it until just now. Bunch of people born 1982-1986 are just now putting their lives together after riding out 2008. The 1984/5 years were an especially large class. People 1982/3 are just now starting to age out of their prime childbearing years ("biological clock").
- shwoopdiwoop 6y ago
  1984 here and buying. Spot on!
- Frost1x 6y ago
  I was quoted on a 30 year fixed rate mortgage at 2.62% APR with no pre-payment penalty (locked in at the mortage dip). Plan to pay it off in a fraction of the time, but it gives quite a safety net at such a low rate I couldn't pass it up. 15 year mortgages were even lower (2.38% APR at the time) but I didn't want to gamble too much with COVID uncertainties (for all we know this pandemic could ride on 2-5 years). If you're fairly financially solid and looking at real-estate, it's not a terrible time. My agent also offered a COVID plan free which declares my agent's agency will re-list and resell the property for me at no cost should I desire within one year (obviously, I'd lose any difference in value should the the market value decline, but if things get truly nasty, I can likely bounce out before the market adapts given how quick sell turnover rates are here). No closing costs would be charged under this case (obviously any require renovations would be my liability). I should add that my mortage will be less than what I'm currently paying in rent... and in pretty solid tech hub that isn't SF.
  - jdhn 6y ago
    Damn, 2.62%? That's absolutely nuts. Makes me think I should look into buying a house...
    - brlewis 6y ago
      That's not for sure. Low interest rates drive prices up or prop prices up. To find the ideal time to buy you have to know the future: if rates are higher than they're going to be, you can buy at a lower price now and then refinance when rates drop. Of course, knowing if/when rates are going to drop is the hard part.
ghaff 6y ago
The people with money who are leaving big cities permanently. (At least some of whom would have done so anyway but pretty much anyone who was contemplating such a move in the next five years and can do so is pushing up the timetable.)
- chiefalchemist 6y ago
  If supply isn't there It'll be interesting to see if demand waits, or returns to its status quo. I live in central NJ, approx 75 mins by train from NYC and 60 mins to PHL. There is a small new development in my area of approx 20+ units. Best I can tell, these homes are struggling to be sold.
  - ghaff 6y ago
    I assume, given the apparent amount of new construction, that there are certain patterns in what various groups of buyers are looking for that may not be well-met by current inventory. I assume people moving from the city to the 'burbs and those moving to rural/small town locations possibly 2-3 hours from a big city are fairly distinct groups.
  - lallysingh 6y ago
    I'm in northern NJ, about 50 minutes from NYC (65 to my job). Houses here are selling like crazy. It's a pretty, diverse, liberal area that's bringing in a lot of people leaving NYC/Brooklyn. Both my neighbors sold in the last 3 months.
    - otoburb 6y ago
      >>Both my neighbors sold in the last 3 months. Lots of people leaving, but since their properties sold it also means that people are, by definition, also buying and moving in. The key is not "how many people are leaving" but the net outflow. I think there would be a more serious problem if property owners are trying to leave the city but cannot sell their units. But the property sales volume (i.e. completed closings) seem to be picking up again[1] in the city. [1] https://www.propertyshark.com/Real-Estate-Reports/2020/08/25/nyc-real-estate-covid19/ https://www.propertyshark.com/Real-Estate-Reports/2020/08/25...
oxymoran 6y ago
Sounds like you are in some sort of echo chamber where you perceive everyone who isn’t filthy rich as living in poverty.
- EvanAnderson 6y ago
  I, too, am wondering how people are affording these houses. I'm not "filthy rich", but my income hasn't changed significantly in the last 15 years. I don't know others who feel they have had significant income increases either. OTOH, in my area (semi-rural Ohio) these new houses are costing at least 1.75X (and some _much_ more) what similar houses cost 15 years ago. Stuff that went for $120 - $150K 15 years ago is running north of $250K now.
  - lallysingh 6y ago
    Financing has gotten really cheap. That'll get you more house for your dollar. People have been building equity on their homes the entire time. Those folks who are selling their $150k houses for $250k are buying other houses, further raising demand.
    - jacobush 6y ago
      That gives you more dollars per house, you mean.
      - lallysingh 6y ago
        I mean that the folks living in a house that's appreciated a lot may want to cash out their equity, adding another buyer and a bunch of money to the market.
  - AlexTWithBeard 6y ago
    $250k less 10% downpayment assuming 3% interest rate for 30 years yields about $1300 per month payments which is $15600 per year. With median household income in Ohio being around 56k, spending 15k on a house looks affordable.
rossdavidh 6y ago
From the article: "The big gains came from the construction of apartments and condominiums, which soared 56.7%. But single-family home construction ticked up, too, by 8.2%." So, nice solid growth in the "buying these houses" part of the sector, but by far bigger growth in the "people need to live somewhere" sector of apartments (which I am guessing is the bigger part of the apts-and-condos segment). Some states stopped construction during the shutdown. Nearly everywhere is now allowing it, so activity surges to catch up. I know of no evidence that births slowed during the shutdown, and the deaths weren't enough to meaningfully impact demand for a place to live. So, it's good news, but ought not to be surprising. Also from the article: "...these are the kind of gains seen after storms/hurricanes" Well, yeah, and the pandemic is in many respects more like a hurricane than it is like an economic recession.
- throwanem 6y ago
  I wouldn't expect to start seeing evidence for a COVID baby bust, or the lack of one, for a good few months yet. Of obvious necessity, birth rate is about a nine-month trailing indicator.
  - rossdavidh 6y ago
    So, supposedly, widespread power outages lead to measurable baby boomlets, rather than busts. With all outside forms of entertainment closed, I wouldn't count on there being a baby bust at all.
    - throwanem 6y ago
      Intuitively, I'd expect a substantive difference between a "we've just got to get through this and everything is fine" power outage - complete with cookouts! Can't let what's in the freezer go to waste - and the calendar-melting, interpersonally isolated anxiety hell and economic collapse, then un-collapse, then maybe collapse again? of COVID. Power outages also have much precedent in the living memory of the US, crucially including that things really will go back to normal again - while pandemics lack any such cultural familiarity. Just that uncertainty all by itself I'd expect to depress birth rate somewhat, nine months hence. (Not to mention, how do you even social distance in bed with somebody? If you're married or live-in partners, then sure, but I have to figure booty calls have plummeted lately, and that's also not a pattern you'd expect to see in a blackout.) All in all - yeah, people have time on their hands in both cases, but they're not otherwise very comparable, and I feel like, in the much higher-anxiety environment of the latter, it's considerably less likely that people will opt to pass some of that time by boning down - and on top of that, safety measures foreclose a considerable range of opportunities for doing so in the first place. That said, we'll know pretty well one way or the other by probably January or February, so for anyone not trying to front-run the diaper and formula markets, the uncertainty of the moment is probably fairly bearable. Fwiw, some Brookings economists found not wholly dissimilar reason to predict a very measurable bust, along with an interesting aside on rates of conception during and around the various waves of the 1918 flu. I don't know whether I entirely buy their analysis, but it's at least not absurd on its face; make of it what you like. https://www.brookings.edu/research/half-a-million-fewer-children-the-coming-covid-baby-bust/ https://www.brookings.edu/research/half-a-million-fewer-chil...
malandrew 6y ago
I just bought as well. Closed in the past month. 2.875% on a 30-year fixed jumbo with no prepayment penalty. It’s our first home. We were planning on waiting for things to bottom out at 12-24 months after the start of the recession and were passively looking. The perfect home came on the market. Super unique. Unlikely to find another one like it. It’s the kind of home that retains value and sells fast due to uniqueness. It was only on the market for less than a week. It’s in Seattle. Massive windows with view of Lake Washington and Rainier and so much privatcy that I can walk around anywhere in the house naked without pulling any blinds. Whether the pandemic rages on and we’re stuck at home or everything springs back to life in downtown Seattle, my partner and I are going to be very comfortable and we have room to start a family or take in my aging father or her nephew once he’s old enough to move out. The calculus for waiting was lowering housing prices but you also need to factor that your rent will be buying your landlord’s home during that time. Two years worth of rent for us was going to be over $120k. If we lose $100k worth of value by buying ~1.5 years early, it’s a wash.

Anon4Now 6y ago

Doesn't seem misleading to me. I think most readers would take it in context of the COVID pandemic, not all time highs. Plus, is pre-Great Recession a good benchmark? That housing market was buoyed by a lot of bad subprime mortgages. Of course it was bigger.

sjg007 6y ago

Huh from my perspective there’s a crap ton of houses being built...

sjg007 6y ago
I don’t mean this in a bad way at all. I’m just surprised that it’s a return to normal vs growth. Where I live though you can build with 3% down. I was surprised to see the remaining lots in my development sell out quickly.

vonmoltke 6y ago

What's really misleading, at least based on the comments here, is that this spike was driven by a drastic increase in multi-family (5+ unit) starts. Near the start of the pandemic in the US, these starts hit their highest level since 1985: https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=HOUST1F,HOUST5F,HOUST2F https://fred.stlouisfed.org/graph/?id=HOUST1F,HOUST5F,HOUST2...,

eli_gottlieb 6y ago
>What's really misleading, at least based on the comments here, is that this spike was driven by a drastic increase in multi-family (5+ unit) starts. ... so COVID-19 somehow helped the YIMBY movement get apartment buildings permitted for bloody once? This is... great news, albeit without any clear causal connection between one thing and another.
- inetknght 6y ago
  > apartment buildings permitted > This is... great news No. Apartment buildings are rented. Rent is bad. What would be good would be single family homes being built and sold to people instead of anything being built to extract yet more rent from an already failing middle and lower class. > albeit without any clear causal connection between one thing and another. No clear causal connection? How about more capital available to businesses than basically ever before?
  - jeffbee 6y ago
    > Rent is bad. American brainwashing in action.
    - Breefield 6y ago
      > Eschew flamebait. Please don't use Hacker News for political or ideological battle. That destroys the curiosity this site exists for.
      - 6y ago

Fjolsvith 6y ago

Not so. Lumber costs have nearly doubled this last month for my shed manufacturing business, likely due to demand in the home construction market. An 8' 2x4 is currently $5.32, whereas it was $3.12 in July (at Menards in Kearney, Nebraska).