Nicole Friedman

Mortgage rates are still high.

But then you also have these other costs, things like insurance, property taxes.

And so it's definitely true that even if mortgage rates come down, homebuyers are still watching the overall monthly expense.

that they might take on to buy a home.

And especially in the condo space, where condos are often priced below single-family homes, if these monthly fees are in the hundreds of dollars a month or even higher, that can really make the difference between a condo being affordable versus out of reach.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, so we have definitely seen different housing markets in different parts of the country.

There's been a lot more competition and rising home prices in the Northeast and Midwest, where the inventory is still lower than normal.

But in the South and West, we've seen much slower housing markets, even declining prices there.

And that's because there's been more supply of homes for sale in a lot of those markets.

Also, as Pulte Group noted, in the West, there's been more concern about a slowdown in the tech sector, in white-collar job hiring.

And a lot of people are just unwilling to make a big purchase, like buying a home, if they're not confident about their job security.

And then Florida is interesting because it's been one of the slowest markets in the country.

We've seen a lot of inventory for sale in Florida, falling prices.

And so now we're starting to hear from homebuilders and from local real estate agents that there's some pickup and demand in Florida.

And so it's going to be important to watch this spring.

whether we're starting to see a turnaround in that market and if the lower prices there are starting to bring some buyers back.

So this is the major challenge for homebuilders is how to keep their homes affordable for buyers.

And we're definitely seeing an investment in recent years in smaller homes, smaller floor plans that can kind of keep prices lower.

Also, homebuilders have really leaned into incentives.