Hands On The Heartland
Checking The Pulse Of The Kansas City Real Estate Market
Kansas City home builders, tired of being ignored by Congress, last week jumped on the YouTube social media platform to get their message out. The home builders plea was for Congress to throw a lifeline to the housing industry that so many developers, general contractors, sub-contractors, real estate agents, decorators, local city budget’s, and others farther down the line, count on. It’s been clear to me for a long time that until Congress does something to fix the housing problem, there isn’t going to be a sustained economic recovery in this country. I come from a home building family and this issue touches me moreso than the typical Kansas City real estate agent. I’ve watched too many reputable home builders and developers go under due to no sales in recent months. One developer I talked to went 7 months without a sale and he said he can only last another couple of months before he’s out of business. You’ll see many similar messages on this video…
If you read my blog often you know I’m a numbers guy and I look to statistics to see how our local real estate communities are doing. It’s discouraging to see that the “best selling” new home communities are only selling a couple of homes per month. I think about all of the people who’s lives revolve around the building industry and who are falling further into turmoil. Looking at the statistics, in July 2005 there were 837 new homes Sold (closed) in the Kansas City metro. In July 2007 there were 561 new homes sold. In July of this year (2009) the number had fallen all the way 269 new homes sold (closed) in the Kansas City metro area. The numbers are even worse than they appear because many of this July’s new home sales were homes that were started 1-2 years ago and being sold at a loss by the builder – or bank that now owns the home. In the video, it states that new home starts have fallen from around 12,000 to the 2,000 range in just three years!
If Kansas City home builders are running at about 1/6th of the volume they were just a few years ago, that makes for a lot of home builder superintendents losing their jobs, a lot of lighting and appliance companies not supplying fixtures, a lot of framers with worthless nail guns, a lot of manufacturers with nothing to produce… God bless my friends in Kansas City who own car dealerships – and I hope the Cash For Clunkers stimulus they’ve received has made a difference – but housing is an even more important catalyst to our economy than the automobile industry. It’s time for Congress to act.
Posted by Jason A. Brown
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