Good urbanism should transcend politics. Socialists and capitalists can walk the same neighborhood and agree it's a pleasant place to live. They can each appreciate the tree canopy, the corner café with people spilling onto the sidewalk, the mix of ages on bikes and on foot, the architectural details of older buildings, and so on.
Ginsburg stated that treating builder business as a core pillar rather than a side channel reflects a broader industry shift. He believes a healthy balance of builders should be around 15% to 20% of the overall retail book of business.
Through Community Facilities Districts (CFD), Municipal Utility Districts (MUD), Public Improvement Districts (PID), Community Development Districts (CDD) and reimbursement districts (RD), builders can potentially shift infrastructure costs off their balance sheets and onto special districts that homebuyers ultimately absorb through property taxes without potentially adding debt to the builder's books.
The cost rose a lot following the pandemic. And some of that was supply chain issues that really increased the costs, and then they didn't quite come back down. And now tariffs are also impacting some products. These costs are part of the reason the amount of new rental housing stock is shrinking.
Mortgage rates are near 6%, which means it costs builders less to do a buy-down, and because they sell homes as a commodity, they're trying their best to manage this cycle and their profit margins. This means selling a new home in recent years has been more of a calculation on how much builder credit they can and need to give.