Major homebuilders are starting to aggressively cut asking prices to find buyers across Houston, San Antonio, Dallas, Austin, Tampa, and Lakeland Florida.
What we are looking at is a motivated seller index by builder, by market. It is a representation of how aggressively homebuilders are cutting prices and how quickly are those price cuts occurring.
It's a score between 0 and 10. 0 means no motivations signals, a 10 indicates an extreme fire sale situation. Anything above 5 is indicative of active price cuts, increasing frequency between those price cuts, and deeper cuts.
What we are seeing is major builders in Texas including Lennar, KB Home and Pulte are marking units down lower. This is the last line of defense. This means they have exhausted concessions, rate buy downs, etc.
Meritage Homes is uniquely doing this in Atlanta. Interestingly, Atlanta has the highest concentration of institutional landlords in the country with many zip codes having more than 1 in 10 homes owned by institutional investors.
Meritage Homes, Toll Brothers, and Dream Finders Homes are aggressively cutting in Tampa.
Will be watching if more cards start turning red here across markets this summer as builders try to find a clearing price.