Below is an article I saw in the Florida Realtors newsletter that I get every day. It talks about new home prices and how builders can’t afford to build lower priced homes. I think this is something buyers don’t understand. This is especially important to understanding new and newer home prices in Ocala. When the real estate market crashed in 2007 home prices fell too low for builders to build new homes. No one started a major new subdivision until just last year. Many resales were selling for $70 to $90 sqft of living area when new home builders need $110 to $130 sqft minimum to make money. This shows that prices don’t just go down for new homes builders stop building. There still are lower priced homes here but they are from the 80’s to the early 2000’s. Newer homes, 2004+, are at a premium as so few new homes were built during the Great Recession. That is not to say newer home prices here in Ocala are high. In fact they are quite low compared to some other parts of the country.

Lower-priced homes ? Builders can’t do it

CHICAGO – June 13, 2016 – Builders find it increasingly difficult to build a home for under $150,000, despite rising consumer demand for more affordable home options.

The median sales price of a new single-family home in 2015 was just under $300,000, according to the National Association of Home Builders; and about 78 percent of new homes were priced between $150,000 and $500,000. Less than 6 percent were priced under $150,000, and an even smaller share was priced under $100,000.

Yet, a 2015 Home Buyer Preference Survey conducted by NAHB shows that 31 percent of recent or prospective home shoppers say they expect to pay less than $150,000 for a home. Fifteen percent expect to pay under $100,000.

“The costs of acquiring land, developing it into a lot and constructing a home on it often make it impossible to produce a new home at a price substantially below $150,000,” NAHB notes on its blog, Eye on Housing.

Government regulation on a new home alone accounts for 24.3 percent of the price of the home – or about $84,000 based on the average new-home price.

“Cost factors like these leave little mystery about why the lower 30 percent of the home buying public is often restricted to the market for existing homes,” NAHB notes.

Source: “New House Price Data Shows Why Costs Are a Problem,” National Association of Home Builders’ Eye on Housing blog (June 6, 2016)

© Copyright 2016 INFORMATION, INC. Bethesda, MD (301) 215-4688