New Home sales in New Bern

New Home Sales 

The past 9 years have been very challenging for home builders in this area as well as most of the country. Many small and medium size builders have left the business and along with them a lot of skilled tradesmen. In fact, so many tradesmen have left the industry that when the housing market recovers and there is a demand for more new homes to be built, we will have a problem finding the labor to build them. This could become a serious problem.

While the demand for new homes has been down, the cost to build them keeps going up. Builders have done a good job trying to contain cost, however increases in building materials combined with the never ending introduction of new building regulations continue to push the cost of new construction up.

New Homes sold by year

2008=333

2009=299

2010=297

2011=228

2012=225

2013=190

2014=158

As you can see there has been a precipitous decline in new home sales over the last 7 years. I believe that last year will be the low mark for new home sales in our market. We should see a small but steady uptick in new home sales in the next few years. Why do I say this? Call it Realtors intuition. Actually it is a combination of clients that I have been working with over the past few months as well as some top secret research I have been doing.

As a former home builder I will attest that building homes is a tough, competitive business. While I can't say I miss it, I will say there is a lot of pride and satisfaction when I ride by a home I built 30 years and thinking to myself, I did built that house Mr. President.


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