TREX Oct 2024 50.000 call

Why there's 'a story of two different housing markets'

Rafe Jadrosich, the senior home builders and building products analyst at Bank of America Securities, joins Brad Smith and Madison Mills on Catalysts to discuss the uptick in new residential construction as mortgage rates trend down and the Federal Reserve cuts rates. “From the beginning of July to today, we've seen mortgage rates fall from around 7% for a 30-year fixed mortgage down to almost 6.1%. That's a really sharp decline in a short period of time, which is driving the increase in the refinancing activity, and we're almost at the lowest mortgage rate in over two years,” Jadresic tells Yahoo Finance. As mortgage rates fall, there’s been an increase in demand for new homes, and Jadrosich expects the market will “start to get a little bit more activity on the existing home sales side.” “There has been an uptick in inventory,” which is “part of the process for existing home sales to uptick, so we still have a lock-in effect, but definitely, as you're going forward here, it's gotten a little bit better.” Jadresic says “there's sort of a story of two different housing markets, right now, you have the resale market, the existing home market, and then you have the new home market. There's a really interesting dynamic in pricing where existing home prices are actually above new home prices,” which the analyst credits to the “dynamic of supply.” As “home builders are adding supply to the market,” existing homeowners that are locked in at an attractive rate “want to be compensated for giving up their rate.” “Lower rates will help solve the affordability problem just because financing costs are lower, although prices probably tick up a little bit,” Jadrosich outlining that “obviously lower rates will support pricing,” but "we just need more inventory on the market as well.” Jadrosich names NVR (NVR) and D.R. Horton (DHI) as homebuilder stocks to watch. For more expert insight and the latest market action, click here to watch this full episode of Catalysts. This post was written by Naomi Buchanan.