Recent headlines point to a slumping US housing market — as mortgage rates average near 7%, an increasing number of potential homebuyers are finding it difficult to finance homes.
Mortgage applications fell in late February to a 28-year low, according to the Mortgage Bankers Association. But some of the country's largest homebuilders are undeterred.
David O'Reilly, CEO of the real estate developer Howard Hughes Corp., told CNN that he's "cautiously optimistic" that the residential housing market is rebounding after a downturn in the second half of 2022.
Before the Bell spoke with O'Reilly about Howard Hughes Corp. and his outlook for the market.
This interview has been edited for clarity.
Before the Bell: Recent data point to doom and gloom for the housing market. What are you seeing?
David O'Reilly: I hear the headlines and they generate a lot of clicks, but I don't see the death and destruction or anything close to what we saw during the global financial crisis. This, in my estimation, will be a very modest downturn. First, as a country, we're short between four and five million homes. We just haven't built enough to keep up with household formation since the global financial crisis. In most markets, we're close to record lows in terms of inventory for homebuilders.
Sure, home prices are down but we're just giving back some of the gains we saw in 2020. We're still making an outsized profit relative to historical norms. When you hear about homebuilders buying down mortgage rates [contributing part of purchase price upfront], they're doing the things that they should do to help move inventory and they're doing it very profitably.
Are you having issues attracting new buyers because of higher mortgage rates?
The mortgage rate is less impactful to homebuyers than the volatility of interest rates.
When interest rates are moving, rising or falling quickly, they create a pause amongst buyers because they want to know where it settles out. No one wants to lock in if they think the mortgage could be cheaper in a month. I think homebuilders have, to a large extent over the past several months, tried to take some of the volatility out of the market.
Some of the volatility has come out naturally as the rate increases have been consistent with expectations and mortgage rates have behaved normally, but some of the risk and uncertainty has been taken out because home builders are saying we're gonna lock in your rate at you know, 4.99% or 5%, for a year or two.
Even though that 5% rate is much higher than the 3% rate a couple of years ago, it gives the consumer confidence to act without the uncertainty of rate volatility.
Are we in a housing recession?
In the second half of 2022 we saw a meaningful downturn in home sales nationally. We saw meaningful reductions across the board. But I'm cautiously optimistic that we're starting to see a turn. I find it encouraging that home sales for the past several months have increased.
But what about new housing starts? Construction is falling.
New housing starts continue to fall — to me, that's great news. During the second half of 2022 we saw the cancellation rate on new home sales surge. Those cancellations left a lot of standing inventory — home builders with homes that they were building for someone that canceled sitting on them.
The fact that they're selling more but building less tells me that they're eating through that inventory. And that is a great sign for the rest of this year.
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