{"id":236594,"date":"2026-01-16T16:49:07","date_gmt":"2026-01-16T16:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/236594\/"},"modified":"2026-01-16T16:49:07","modified_gmt":"2026-01-16T16:49:07","slug":"builder-sentiment-slips-as-affordability-strains-new-home-demand","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/236594\/","title":{"rendered":"Builder sentiment slips as affordability strains new\u2011home demand"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Late last year,\u00a0roughly two\u2011thirds of builders <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mpamag.com\/us\/mortgage-industry\/market-updates\/us-homebuilder-sentiment-stuck-in-negative-as-price-cuts-hit-record-highs\/557007\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">reported using incentives<\/a>, while average price reductions hovered around 6% as companies tried to get deals closed\u00a0in the face of affordability stress. Price cuts and incentives have\u00a0become increasingly necessary\u00a0as elevated rates and a growing pipeline of new supply met cautious buyers.<\/p>\n<p>Labor and cost pressures continued to squeeze<\/p>\n<p>Even as demand cooled, chronic labor shortages did not disappear. A recent assessment by Associated Builders and Contractors suggested the US construction industry would need to attract about 349,000 net new workers in 2026 just to replace retirees and maintain capacity.<\/p>\n<p>The HMI\u2019s underlying components pointed in the same direction. The index measuring current sales conditions slipped to 41, the gauge charting traffic of prospective buyers dropped to 23, and the measure of future sales fell to 49, moving back below the neutral 50 threshold.<\/p>\n<p>Regional three\u2011month moving averages showed sentiment softest in the South and West, at 35, and somewhat firmer in the Northeast and Midwest.<\/p>\n<p>NAHB\u2019s HMI, compiled for more than four decades, is based on a monthly survey of single-family builders. Participants are asked to rate current home sales and expectations for the next six months as \u201cgood,\u201d \u201cfair,\u201d or \u201cpoor,\u201d and to assess buyer traffic as \u201chigh to very high,\u201d \u201caverage,\u201d or \u201clow to very low.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Late last year,\u00a0roughly two\u2011thirds of builders reported using incentives, while average price reductions hovered around 6% as companies&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":236595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[139806,138,219,139805,139804,111,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-236594","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-economy","8":"tag-builder-sentiment","9":"tag-business","10":"tag-economy","11":"tag-homebuilder-confidence","12":"tag-national-association-of-home-builders-nahb","13":"tag-new-zealand","14":"tag-newzealand","15":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=236594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/236595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=236594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=236594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=236594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}