Addressing Housing Market Challenges and Opportunities at IBS
Originally Published by: HBS Dealer — February 26, 2025
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Robert Dietz delivers a housing forecast during the International Builder's Show.
Packed aisles and crowded exhibit booths were par for the course as the International Builders’ Show and KBIS opened here across all the halls of the Las Vegas Convention Center, and even into the parking lot.
Exact attendance figures were hard to come by, but estimates put the number up over 100,000. The crowds came to do business, regardless of the ups and downs of the housing market. How is the new home market? A succinct answer came during a National Association of Home Builders super session in the words of respected real estate analyst Ali Wolf of Zonda. “It’s fine,” she said.
The parking in Las Vegas displayed several modular homes, including this Zook Cabins model.
Digital tools and technology were an emphasis at the Builders FirstSource exhibit.
In the same super session, Robert Dietz, chief economist of the NAHB, pointed to the good, the bad and the uncertain results as they pertain to housing of the presidential election that brought Donald Trump to office. Dietz likes the idea of the extension of most or all of the 2017 tax cuts, as well as an anticipated reduction of costly and inefficient regulatory policies. The NAHB believes regulatory costs make up 23.8 percent of the cost of building a home. And that figure has risen significantly in recent years, he said, creating an over-regulated building environment.
In the “bad” column, he pointed to prospects for a larger government deficit, tariffs and the inflationary impacts of both. Still uncertain, he continued, are the impacts of illegal immigration enforcement and general global affairs. These he described as uncertain risks.
The NAHB's official 2025 housing forecast expects single-family housing starts to come in at 1,012,000, marking a slight increase of 0.2 percent over the 2024 figure of 1,010,000.
Multifamily starts in 2025 are forecast to decline 11 percent to 317,000.
"It's going to be a flat year," Dietz said. "And be real careful when you see the monthly housing starts data on Fox Business or CNBC. The monthly numbers are going to be all over the place."