HOMEBUILDING

From Page 1 year to still tangled, albeit improving, supply chains, and the mismatched reality that the cost to build a home and what most buyers can a ord are two very di erent numbers.

“We may go into a recession,” Darian Neubecker, the COO of Bloomeld Hills-based Robertson Homes, said of the current state of the macro economy.

But while Neubecker told Crain’s that the company’s business was down last year somewhere between one-third and one-half year over year, his outlook remains generally positive given that down cycles are nothing new for the industry.

“ e reality is, we’ve been in a recession in homebuilding for the better part of a year,” he said.

Metro Detroit lags

While data show that homebuilding activity in Southeast Michigan has fallen to a more-than-a-decade low — absent the pandemic-related shutdown in spring 2020 — there is still activity.

Per the HBA of Southeastern Michigan, Oakland and Macomb counties make up the bulk of the homebuilding permits in the region, accounting for just more than three-quarters of the activity.

e suburbs of Macomb, Shelby, Lyon, Canton and Independence townships were the top municipalities for new home construction, according to the HBA of Southeastern Michigan data.

But the decline being experienced in metro Detroit is not necessarily reective of the situation around the state, said Bob Filka, CEO of the statewide HBA, based in Lansing.

Builders in parts of West Michigan, such as near Grand Rapids, in Ottawa County and around Traverse City, remain quite busy, Filka said.

Indeed, while permits in Southeast Michigan were down more than 25 percent from 2021 to 2022, statewide that gure fell by just 10.4 percent.

Builders are “pivoting,” Filka said. Some are negotiating with lenders to buy down mortgage rates for buyers, and others are looking more toward building rental housing vs. single-family homes.

Ultimately, people need housing even though macroeconomic conditions make adding homes di cult, according to Filka.

“We’re kind of in this weird situation where demand is dampened, but the need is still high,” he said.

e HBA chapter in Southeast Michigan projects that builders could see some relief later this year, forecasting that the region will see a slight uptick with permit numbers jumping back to pre-pandemic levels.