US Housing Market Downturn: Builder Inventory Surge and Price Cuts in 2024

America's home builders face record inventory, prompting price cuts and warnings of a market downturn.

### 2025 Housing Market Warning: Builder Inventory Surge
* 🏠 **High home builder inventory** levels are mirroring the 2008 housing crisis, with over 492,000 homes currently for sale.
* 📉 Builders are implementing significant price cuts ($40,000-$50,000) and offering attractive mortgage rates (as low as 4.7%) to stimulate sales.
* ⚠️ Major home builders like Lennar and D.R. Horton are reporting concerning financial results, including revenue declines and stock plunges, reflecting weak buyer demand.
* 📍 The **"Smile States" (Sun Belt)**, particularly Texas and Florida, are experiencing the most significant inventory increases and price drops, with inventory reaching seven-year highs in many areas.  
* 📉  CEO Stuart Miller of Lennar noted that "in the course of the fourth quarter, the housing market that appeared to be improving as the Fed cut short-term rates proved to be far more challenging as mortgage rates rose almost 100 basis points," impacting sales and new orders.
* 🏡  New homes are competing with existing homes, creating challenges for resellers who may struggle to compete with builders' pricing and incentives.
* ⚠️  Despite the downturn, builders like Meritage Homes are planning to increase spec inventory in 2025, fueled by optimism linked to the new presidential administration.
* 📊  ReventureApp offers home price forecast scores (0-100) to help buyers assess market trends and make informed decisions; a score closer to 0 indicates a higher likelihood of price drops.

Home builders across America are dealing with their biggest pile-up of inventory since the 2008 housing crash. This pile

up of inventory is now causing these builders to cut prices, and many of them are now issuing concerning warnings

about the state of the housing market heading into 2025. Because what we are now seeing is a supply pipeline

on builder lots that's the biggest of all time, even bigger than the previous peak in the 2008 crash. You can see that home

builders in America now have over 300,000 homes for sale in the South; that's the highest level ever. So when you walk

around these home building sites in your community in Florida or Texas or Tennessee or Arizona, you're just going

to see tons and tons of new homes being built, ready to be sold, and these builders are now having to get desperate

to sell many of these homes. I'm seeing $40,000-$50,000 price cuts on a lot of these

houses, and they're even doing 45% mortgage rates. I'm wondering how these builders are even making money on these

houses anymore. The most recent warning comes from Lennar, the second-largest home builder in America. They

just reported fourth-quarter earnings and showed a 9% year-over-year decline in revenue, with their stock price

plummeting as a result. Meanwhile, one month ago, D.R. Horton, the largest home builder in America, had a stock plunge on

a Q4 earnings revenue miss, with the big issue being the amount of homes for sale on these builder lots. Home builders now

have 492,000 homes for sale at the end of 2024; that's the second-highest

level of builder inventory ever. The only other time we saw builder inventory even close to this high was 2006-2007, before the

Big crash, meaning that these home builders could be cutting prices by a lot in 2025 if these trends hold in.

In fact, some builders have already been cutting prices, so I want you folks to take a look at this community close to

Tampa. I actually toured this community over the weekend and I was shocked at how affordable some of the

houses were. Here you see that the builder is offering five-bed, three-bath homes at 2500 sq ft for

$369,000—that's $150 a square foot. And not only that, they're giving crazy mortgage rate buy-downs. I

actually went to that home building site and toured it and talked to the sales agent, and she was saying I could get a

4.7% mortgage rate for the full 30-year term of the mortgage, meaning that my payment would only be $2,100 a month for

a five-bed, three-bath house.  This indicates that there's something strange going on in this housing market right now.

I mean, these builders are cutting prices, they're giving big mortgage rate buy-downs, they have plenty

of homes to choose from, and yet they're still struggling to make sales, suggesting a real problem with housing

demand right now. Home buyers seem to be checked out of the housing market; they're not jumping to buy homes right

now just because the Federal Reserve cut interest rates and the election is over. Rather, these builders are observing persistent challenges with home buyer

demand. You can see, in particular, Stuart Miller, the CEO of Lennar, said that in the course of the fourth quarter, the housing

market that appeared to be improving as the Fed cut short-term rates proved to be far more challenging as mortgage

rates rose almost 100 basis points. He says accordingly, in the fourth quarter, sales pace lagged expectations and our

New orders fell short of expectations at 177,000 homes versus 190,000 homes projected. Now we can see that Lennar

they're the second largest builder in America by volume of units delivered, so the fact that they're reporting these

issues is of big concern. Meanwhile, the number one home builder is D.R. Horton, and concerningly, D.R. Horton is also

reporting similar problems. D.R. Horton missed their fourth-quarter earnings estimates; their revenue was down 5%

year-over-year. Their CEO, Donald Tomlin, said in their earnings call that, "We believe that rate volatility and uncertainty are

causing home buyers to stay on the sidelines in the near term." But the broader implication here, folks, is not

good for the housing market in 2024. I mean, in many of the states where these builders are most active, we have record

high home prices, and the fact that these builders are signaling weakness shows that there are fewer buyers coming into

these states, and that prices are going to need to come down to allow local buyers to step into the market and

afford the homes.  Opening up RevenueApp, I'm going to show you some of the states where these builders are most active. We

go to a demographic data point called building permits. You can see the most building permits are pulled in Texas, as

well as Florida, North Carolina, California, Arizona, and Georgia. So the states in red have the most building permits, but on a relative basis, it's

really here in the South where the builders are most active. And so one way to actually think about these builder

warnings about demand and inventory is that it's really impacting this slice of the U.S. housing market here. They're

called the "Smile States," warm-weather, Sun Belt climates. This is where the builders are most active, and this is where

Inventory has gone up the most, so in Texas there are now 115,000 homes for sale on the resale market. That's the highest

level of inventory in seven years. So, on the resale market, inventory in Texas is exploding. Now you have the builders

saying we're having issues, meaning more inventory is going to hit in 2025. Meanwhile, in Florida, inventory is up to

152,000 homes, also the highest level in seven years, suggesting that we're in a downturn in Florida's housing market.

Meanwhile, in Tennessee, Tennessee just hit its highest level of inventory in seven years. Most notably here in the Sun Belt,

which is where I think home prices have the greatest likelihood of dropping in 2025, is after all the housing market is

a supply and demand equation. Everyone, how many people are looking to buy homes versus how many people are looking to

sell homes? And that equation in the South is tilting towards now an oversupplied housing market that's much

more favorable to buyers, where sellers are really going to have no choice but to cut prices next year. And the

interesting thing about these builders is that they have pricing power. So, while they're starting to struggle in terms of

their earnings reports and their stock prices, Lennar is down 25% over the last three months, they still actually have

decent profit margins, so they have room to cut prices and they have room to give mortgage rate buy-downs. That's

something that's going to mean that the builders actually end up faring better than existing home sellers. I want you to

think about something, everyone. Remember this community I showed you earlier, the Lennar community where they're selling houses at $150 a foot? If you go to the

same area, east of Tampa, you can see that there are existing homeowners, resellers, who are also trying to sell their homes.

Maybe they bought a home from the builder two or three years ago, like in this case, and they're trying to sell a

four-bed, two-bath for $3.95 million, and they're still trying to make a profit on it, like

the owner of this house bought it for $317,000 in 2021; they're trying to get $395,000. However, this seller is now competing with the builder who's offering a bigger, newer house for

$20,000 less with a 4.7% mortgage rate. And this is almost the conundrum that

you have as a home buyer in these homebuilder communities: that while it might appear attractive at first glance

to buy a house from a builder because they're giving a more affordable price and they're giving a buy-down mortgage rate,

if you then go to try to sell that house two or three years later, you might actually have trouble selling your house

because you're going to be competing with that builder when you go to sell it. And actually, folks, I had to see this for

myself. Everyone, I was looking at the Lennar earnings reports; I was looking at the data on how much the builder's

inventory was going up, and I said to myself, "I need to go on the ground and look at what's going on here in the"

Tampa metro area for myself." So I did that, and over the next couple of minutes, I'm going to show you some clips of me

touring different home building sites. And you know what I saw, everyone? Something that kind of shocked me. This...

folks, I want you to take a look at what's right behind me. I just drove about 10 minutes down the street and I

found a deserted home building site here from D.R. Horton. This is America's largest home builder, D.R. Horton. I talked to you

About a month and a half ago, they gave some warning in their earnings call about reduced demand in Florida and

Texas. Well, look at what we're seeing here in Florida: all these brand-new, built homes from D.R. Horton. I'm going

to take you down here so you can see what we're dealing with. Almost universally, these homes have an

available sign in front of them. That's how you know that the house is a spec house—that the builder built it and

finished it, and there's no buyer. You can see it: 'available,' 'available,' 'available,' 'available,' 'available.'

It looks like one person bought that house over there. And this is what scares me, actually, about the builder market

right now and the housing market in 2025: it's not just the overall homes for sale, but the amount of spec inventory that's

sitting on the market. We just haven't seen this ever, except for the 2008 bubble. And so many people in the housing

market seem to think that a crash is impossible. This is what amazes me: we're seeing all the signs of a

downturn already playing out in the market in Florida and Texas. It's unquestionable that there's a downturn

playing out in those two markets. Inventory is spiking on the resale market; builder supplies are surging; prices are now starting to drop; yet there's still

this denial in the housing market mainstream that this is actually happening. And I think one of the reasons

why there's the denial is people look at the national home price index, right? And the national home price index is still

at a record high and it's still actually up 3.5% to 4% year-over-year,

depending on the metric you look at. So we still are seeing national home prices go up, and as a result, I think a lot of

Analysts in the housing market, they lose the local perspective, and a lot of the news reporters lose the local

perspective and are ignoring the fact that there is a downturn occurring here in Florida. Now I want you to take a look

at this. Everyone, this is another home building site, but you could see they're just putting the stakes in the ground

here on this home building site. They have a couple of houses out of the ground here; they have a couple of houses out of

the ground here, but you could see all this land, all this land, and you can see the signs over there for where they're

going to have their lots for their homes. And this is what's also interesting: it's not just that there's a big pipeline of

built homes completed and under construction; there's also a big pipeline yet to be built. And what's super

interesting is that these builders don't seem to care about the slowdown in the market. Rather, the builders are going

full speed ahead into 2025 and are building more homes into this regional downturn in Florida, where I think prices

in Florida could probably drop by about 10% in 2024. I'm going to get into some

of those specific projections in a second on how much I think prices are going to drop in Florida this year, but

2008 all over again. (Home Builder warning)

Reventure Consulting

Record High Home Builder Inventory and Price Cuts

High inventory levels are causing builders to cut prices significantly.

Builders are issuing warnings about the housing market in 2025.

The current supply pipeline is the largest ever recorded.

Over 300,000 homes are for sale in the South, a record high.

Significant price cuts ($40,000-$50,000) and mortgage rate buy-downs are being offered.

Major Home Builders Report Earnings Decline and Concerns

Lennar (second-largest builder) reported a 9% year-over-year revenue decline.

D.R. Horton (largest builder) experienced a stock plunge due to high inventory.

492,000 homes are currently for sale, the second-highest level ever.

Inventory levels are comparable to those seen before the 2008 crash.

Further price cuts are anticipated in 2025 if trends continue.

Analysis of Current Market Conditions and Buyer Behavior

Example of affordable homes with significant mortgage rate buy-downs.

Builders are struggling to make sales despite price cuts and incentives.

Home buyers are not actively participating in the market.

Lennar's CEO cites challenges due to rising mortgage rates and lagging sales.

D.R. Horton also reports similar problems and reduced buyer confidence.

Regional Impact and Implications for Home Prices

Record-high home prices in many states are contributing to the slowdown.

Building permits data highlights the South as the most affected region.

High inventory levels in Texas and Florida suggest a market downturn.

The supply-demand equation is shifting towards an oversupplied market.

Builders have pricing power and room to cut prices further.

Comparison of New Construction vs. Resale Homes

New homes from builders are priced competitively against existing homes.

Resellers may face challenges competing with builders' pricing and incentives.

Buying from a builder might create difficulties when reselling later.

On-the-Ground Observation of Builder Inventory

Observation of a deserted D.R. Horton building site with many unsold homes.

High levels of spec inventory are a major concern.

Signs of a downturn are present despite national home price index increases.

Builders continue to build despite the slowdown, suggesting a potential price drop.

Meritage Homes plans to increase spec inventory in 2025.

Increased market sentiment due to Trump's election doesn't improve affordability.

Increased production may lead to further price drops, benefiting buyers.

Positive outlook for buyers, negative for existing homeowners and investors.

Builders have room to cut prices further due to high profit margins during the pandemic.

Advice for prospective homebuyers to understand market volatility and price drops.