New Construction - Real Estate, Updates, News & Tips

10 Areas with the Most Homebuilding Activity

Even though builders have been saddled with higher material costs and labor and lot woes, home building has been on the rise over the past year. Single-family permits, a gauge measuring future construction, have jumped about 30% from July 2020 to July of this year. The permits have increased in all four major regions of the U.S., led by the Northeast and the South, according to the National Association of Home Builders’ analysis posted on its E

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Building Material Costs Continue to Surge

A recent decline in lumber prices is helping to mitigate building costs, but that effect is being offset by numerous increases in other building materials that are surpassing records. Home building materials have climbed by up to 19% over the past year, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics Producer Price Index.The building materials that have seen the largest increases so far in 2021, according to the National Association of Home Buil

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Wildfire Prevention Plan Includes Repurposing Homes

Paradise, Calif., faced the deadly and destructive 2018 Camp Fire, and officials want to make sure history never repeats itself. To that end, officials are buying up properties that are most at risk for wildfires to protect future homeowners and the town by turning these purchased properties into fire-resistant green spaces, NPR reports.The 2018 Camp Fire wiped out a large section of Paradise, marking one of the deadliest and destructive wildfire

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Building Material Costs Surpass Records

Prices for building materials have climbed 19.4% over the last 12 months, increasing 13% in 2021 alone, according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.Buyers are seeing the results in the prices of new homes. The median sales price for a new home was $361,800 in June, up 6% compared to a year earlier.Steel mill product prices increased 10.8% in July following a 6.2% increase in June. Prices have increased 108.6% over the past year and 87.6% in 2021

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New-Home Sales Tumble as Building Contracts Slow

Sales of newly built single-family homes continued to decline in June as some builders slowed sales contracts to manage supply-chain challenges and more potential buyers became priced out. Homebuilding timelines are stretching longer and higher construction costs are frustrating buyers.Sales of new single-family homes fell to the lowest level since the first month of the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic in the U.S. in early June. Sales dropped 6

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Top 7 Hot Spots for Undeveloped Land

As more Americans look outside cities for a place to call home, prices for undeveloped land in many areas of the country are surging to new highs. “Land prices are going up everywhere,” Ali Wolf, chief economist at Meyers Research, told realtor.com®. “It’s one of the hottest commodities that exist today.”The areas seeing raw land prices rise the most over the past year also are experiencing economic growth. And as more people leave big

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Prices for Construction Materials Jump 26% in a Year

Widespread shortages on building materials continue to prompt home builders to raise their prices. Material prices have increased by 26% over the past year for building the same house, according to National Association of Home Builders data. That’s put pressure on new-home prices: In May, the median price of a newly built home was 18% higher than a year ago, at $374,400.Material shortages have increased for appliances, paint, lumber,

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Surging New-Home Prices Shut Out Low-End Buyers

Rising prices in new-home construction have mostly shut out buyers in the lower end of the market, shows a new analysis from the National Association of Home Builders. Buyers in the bottom one-fourth of the market have had to look exclusively at the stock of existing homes. However, fast-rising prices in the existing-home market may soon price out buyers as well.The median price of a newly built single-family home that was started in 2020 was $33

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New-Home Sales Drop to Lowest Pace of Year

Prices are surging and uncertainty in the availability of building materials, lots, labor is chipping away at new-home sales, even as buyer demand remains high.Newly built, single-family home sales fell nearly 6% in May—the lowest pace in a year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and U.S. Census Bureau reported Wednesday. A new home sale is reflected in the survey when a sales contract is signed or a deposit is accepted.New-home p

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New-Home Starts Rise, but Still Not Enough

Builders can’t build fast enough as home buyer demand continues to surge. But rising material costs are proving a challenge, making it more difficult to keep new homes within buyers’ and builders’ budgets.Still, the construction of single-family homes rose 4.2% in May, despite the rising costs. But they are poised to slow again as single-family permits—a gauge to future construction—declined to the lowest pace since September 2020, the

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