patrick.net

Strategist says

What percent did they represent in 2000? Most businesses in the country are small businesses, the owners of whom widely use option arms.

We have less than 9 million self employed Americans, small business creation has been on a down trend. The highest estimate I have seen of actual self employed Americans is 14.6 million

Every self employed borrower that I have was able to get their loan, because they make money, this is a myth that millions of Americans are sitting with 20%-40% down payments and can't buy homes because they need to lie on their loan applications because they use the tax code to shelter away incomes to pay the least amount of taxes

Every chart we have has showed a trend lower

I have seen this same tactic being used by all tight lending people and then when the data is show, they realize how small this group is

Strategist says

They don't build enough because those who want to buy can't get the loans.

You have to stop this BS argument.
Loans are not a barrier when middle class people want to buy a $250K house, which is close to the medium new house price in the US.
Loans become a barrier when half the houses in san Mateo county sell for more than a million...
... Which is the same as saying: loans are not the barrier, prices are a barrier. Period.

Strategist says

They don't build enough because those who want to buy can't get the loans.

They don't build enough because land with permits is not there. Period.
All the rest is BS.

It's just a deliberate choice.
Too many people want to "preserve open space" blah blah... code for DO NOT BUILD. itself code for SCREW THE NEXT GENERATION.
Too many people profit from rising prices.

Logan Mohtashami says

Existing homes are just so much cheaper than new homes, so when more move up buyers come into play they will supply more first time home buyer crop. They know this, so slow and steady and keeping an eye out on profit margins.

Move up buyers need to find a new home to buy before they sell the old one. If no one builds it, and/or it's priced so high that they can't make the jump, then they will stay put indefinitely. This is what is happening:
1 - new units built are below population growth
2 - housing become scarcer
3 - prices jump up, year after years, as people compete for the roofs.
4 - new entrants, first time buyers are priced out, can't afford even a modest unit. They stay with parents, or double up.
5 - move-up buyers do not find a house to move to that they can afford. Do no sell.
6 - inventory is low, turn around is low, sales low,
7 - builders should be able to make a killing, but constrained by land made available (and land prices) and permit processes.
8 - go to 1

This cycle from hell will continue until most workers are priced out and the CA economy runs into a wall.

Heraclitusstudent says

Move up buyers need to find a new home to buy before they sell the old one

Typically move up buyers buy existing homes not so much new homes, due to scale of homes out there.

New homes in real terms is a luxury item of sorts or anything almost new is considered luxury.

I saw this with my parents home this year when they tried to sell their 2,000,000 place but their home is old, but the 2 next door neighbors sold for 2.5 and 2.45 million with cash to Foreign buyers because those home were built less than 8 years ago so they have some of the bells and whistles of a new homes

New homes cost a pretty penny these days,

There is a test pilot of new home coming out in 2016 or 2017 it's a 120K home with no upgrades, I forgot which builder is going to test run this program to see if it will work, but the notion that affordable housing is a test pilot case speaks for itself

Until we get more affordable homes back in the new home market place, which should happen in a few more years, the upside to new homes, even though it's there because adjusting to population sales are very low, it's just limited.

Slow and Steady rise, 152 million working people and we are struggling to get to a 500K level with rates at 3.625% -4.125%

Wells Fargo probably or should lower their estimates of total home sales of 550K already, you would need to see 600K+ prints with no lower revisions in the last few months ( every month) to get to a total sales of 550K now, I caught on to this months ago as the lower revision trend was making total estimate to optimistic

wow - 630k new units for next year? what are you predicting?

landtof says

wow - 630k new units for next year? what are you predicting?

630K was a 2014 prediction 3 years ago, man have times changed by some of the housing analyst firms.

To a degree I understand why so many people including Ivy Zelman who said Housing Is In Nirvana. 2013 Call. She was considered the #1 Housing Analyst in America and as you can imagine we aren't on talking terms anymore as I was shooting down her Nirvana thesis from day one

“I think we're in nirvana for housing” says Ivy Zelman, CEO of Zelman Associates.

With that said, I really need to see how the last few months turn out for new homes, because new home sales have to stabilize now and need to stop having lower revisions with higher inventory levels

This year was looking for 8%-12% growth working from that 437K level with capacity for more sales if Median Prices fell or cooled down, we got that this year, Median sales prices stopped rising at it's high fast pace and this is more due to mix up in sales prices more than anything else.

That is how the year is going to end, but the 24%-41% sales growth that were predicted for 2015 just was too much.

I will have 2016 Prediction at the end of December, sales growth trend are still in place because adjusted to population sales are just simply too low now for new homes, the last time it was this low was the early 1980's while we were in a recession and rates where north of 10%

Here is a crazy data line set. Now New homes shouldn't get any worse than this last print, because this last print was simply very weak. Headline numbers tend to be volatile, it's revisions that are key. So, if new home sales can stabilize and not have anymore revisions lower then you can get to 500K+ total sales for the year. If do have lower headline and lower revisions then that would mean

2013
2014
2015

All later stage economic cycle years with rising inventory will be under 500K total sale limit. That would have seem to be impossible considering how low sales have been already.

However, to get under 500K total sales you would still need to have misses on the headline and lower revisions.

So far the pending home sales softness hasn't impacted the headline existing home sales numbers, even if sales come in weak for the last few report, we are still looking at

5.19 - 5.32 million in total sales with lower cash buyers and higher mortgage buyers.

Looking at next year to have cash buyer have some teenager prints for the monthly numbers which would be the first time we see that in the cycle.

Ironman says

What percentage of deals are you seeing blow up that don't make it to closing because of finance issues, inspections issues, legal issues, etc.?

What percentage of deals blow up when you get into the nitty gritty of the buyers personal finances and they have issues that they can't fix and end up not closing?

I don't see or hear much of that anymore. In some cases you issues with the 4506-T process on a loan, but for the most part outside a lower appraisal or Condo project not being approved I believe 95% goes through.

In a bout a month we will see if TRID impacts any deal from closing on time but that is more paperwork oriented then actual capacity, even though some lenders due have a clause to cancel the loan at closing and forced to start over again, I don't see that happening much.

Logan,
This is Patnet!
You need to cherry pick one small community that backs up your point & that will disprove all other arguments,$#!*&+?%>{~&.
ROFLMAO