By NAHBNow
Evidence of a suburban shift for consumer home buying preferences as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic can be found in the second quarter NAHB Home Building Geography Index (HBGI).
“The increasing demand for construction in more suburban neighborhoods is being driven in large part by the coronavirus outbreak,” said NAHB Chairman Chuck Fowke. “The growing trend for working at home is enabling more families to choose to live in lower cost, lower density communities. Moreover, persistent housing affordability challenges exacerbated by soaring lumber prices that have added $16,000 to the price of a single-family home since mid-April are adding to the need to find affordable housing in lower cost markets.”
“The county-level second quarter HBGI data shows relative growth in lower density markets that represent half of all single-family construction,” said NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz. “We saw initial evidence of this trend in the first quarter, and in recent months these markets have registered faster growth for both single-family and multifamily building, as the demand for new construction shifted to more suburban and exurban communities.”
