Dive summary:
- Few people were creating buildable home lots when the U.S. market was in a trough, and now supply-and-demand pricing is alive and well as the price of land steepens and builders' only choice is to pay and get the deed before someone else does.
- Zelman & Associates put the increase in the price of land nationally at 13% last year, and the National Association of Home Builders figures land as making up 21.7% of the sale price of a new home.
- Raymond James housing analyst Buck Horne forecasts home prices' going up 10% to 15% this year, with the land under them driving a lot of that increase.
From the article:
From 2006 through 2011, residential land lost a cumulative 58% of its value, Zelman says. ...
