Take Advantage of Today’s Low Rates and Purchase a New-Construction Home

If you’ve been on the house hunt anytime in the past year, you know how heated the real estate market has been in South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia. Aside from the chaos of purchasing a used home, new-construction homes have remained in high demand across the country. Recently, news reports show that the cost of lumber is dropping, and many Americans are expecting an immediate drop in home prices across the board. But before you pass up today’s homes in hopes of a cheaper one on the horizon, there are a few things you should know about the current market—and why you should look into purchasing from Logan Homes sooner rather than later. There are many factors at play leading to a new home demand this year.

Interest rates are still low

Mortgage rates are driven by movements in worldwide financial markets. As the world returns to a sense of normalcy after the global pandemic, rates are predicted to start creeping up. According to The Mortgage Reports, rates will stay steady through the summer but experience a projected increase come fall.

If you need to buy a home soon but are wanting to wait it out to see if home prices will fall, then you could be sacrificing the incredibly low interest rates. Take advantage of the numbers now by talking to one of Logan Homes’ preferred lenders. They help streamline the process to make it simple for our buyers, so you’ll be ready to finance one of our homes in no time.

The lumber industry needs time to recover 

You don’t have to work in the homebuilding industry or even be searching to buy a home to know that recent lumber prices were one of the main reasons the cost of homes soared in 2020 and 2021. Now you may be hearing that lumber prices are dropping—which is true in some instances, but that doesn’t mean home costs are falling. Even though the price of July lumber declined 56% since its peak on May 10th of this year, builders are still getting charged record high prices from retailers and wholesalers. Builders will only start to receive these lower prices when prices fall long enough to materially lower a supplier’s average costs after a long period of high costs, and suppliers are going to take a long time to recover from the impact COVID-19 had on their business. 

There’s still material, labor and equipment shortages

According to the National Association of Home Builders, the average 12-month increase in materials costs for the same house was 26.1 percent. Shortages, aside from lumber, include appliances, plywood, windows and doors, trusses, copper wiring, plumbing fixtures and fitting, vinyl siding, HVAC equipment, hardwood flooring and more—all of which are absolutely essential to constructing and finishing a home.

To give a few examples of what we have seen at Logan Homes with price increases relating to shortages and delays, windows have increased by an average of 8 percent per quarter in 2021 alone, engineered wood products for hardwood flooring by 35 percent (if not higher), siding materials up to 20 percent and many more important items to each home have increased significantly. 

At least one of these shortages are affecting almost every builder in the country, and we don’t see this issue resolving soon. So the longer you wait to buy your home, the longer you’ll have to wait for materials and equipment to be available. This can cause an extreme delay in your journey to finding a new home, leading to higher interest rates and possibly higher listing prices down the road.

Logan Homes has available inventory now and many coming soon

There’s no reason to wait for your next home when Logan Homes has move-in ready inventory and other coming-soon homes available throughout our markets in Coastal NC, SC and GA. If you’re eager to take advantage of today’s low interest rates by purchasing one of our thoughtfully designed, energy-efficient homes, contact our Online Sales Concierge to get started.