Key Take Aways
• Kimber Davison shared with the group that she created a couple of different “COVID Paragraphs” that she now uses depending on who she is representing, either the contractor or the developer. Depending on the client and what they specialize in, she inserts the “governmental actions” based on the national emergency.
• Texas employment rose a nonannualized 0.6 percent in August after posting 0.2 percent growth in July.
• U.S. employment grew a nonannualized 1.0 percent, outpacing Texas employment growth for the third month in a row.
• A decrease in Texas initial unemployment claims in the week ending Sept. 12 suggests that the unemployment rate will continue to decline.
• Existing-home sales climbed sharply in July and remained solid in early August. Home builders continued to note widespread strength in sales.
• Phil Crone, Executive Director at the Dallas Builders Association spent a lot of time meeting with local elected officials to make them aware of the importance of construction and how it is essential. He shared that during the beginning stages of the Coronavirus, there was a lot happening all at the same time in the Dallas area: he found himself talking to the local County Judge about what they needed to do to stay open and what the rules were that would be coming down for residential construction while also negotiating with Members of Congress trying to get construction and real estate onto the Department of Homeland Security’s Critical Infrastructure List, which was later used by Governor Abbott and several others as the “Essential Business List”.
• He is “incredibly optimistic for our market” and sees approximately 38,000-39,000 starts this year which is up 10% from last year.
• Jobs – we were adding as a region 80,000-120,000 jobs a year pre-pandemic and over the course of two months, four years of job growth was “wiped out”. We are just now slowly starting to get that back, but it has been kind of a ‘winners and losers” type of situation.
• Affordable housing was a concern pre-pandemic but now due to work disruptions and unemployment, we need to make sure the people left behind in the employment disruptions aren’t being left behind when trying to find a “roof over their head and an affordable home”. There are concerns of pricing and materials disruption and the overall economy as a whole.
• Lumber has gone up 170% since mid-April. We need to get the lumber situation under control in order to get the economy back on track.