Homebuilding Products are Bad for the Environment

Recent home trends are exposing the need for more sustainable architectural products

In my equity research days of covering home improvement retailers, I held a strong view that two secular home building trends were helping to keep stores like Home Depot humming even as a slowdown in the broader real estate markets begun to take hold by late 2021.

We’re in the golden era of home flipping. Last year, flipped homes reached a record high 8.4% of all transactions. Yes, the number of transactions was way down in 2022, but the 407,417 home and condo flips is the highest number on record since Attom, the premier provider of property and real estate data began collecting statistics in 2005. Data suggests we are past the peak ROI for greasy-elbowed property speculators which is likely to keep less serious pros on the sidelines in the coming years. Now, you might wonder if this trend line is inversely correlated with interest rates. Yes, short-term borrowing costs appear to have seriously eroded profits which nationally averaged more than 50% in 2017 but fell to 27% in 2022.