Why Aren’t We Building New Houses??

(00:01.326)

The closing starts, no bueno. They collapsed in March. It’s actually the biggest drop since the COVID lockdowns. Ouch. Ouch. Building permits also down. I’m watching this news this morning. They’re talking about it on CNBC. You got Andrew Ross Sorkin and you got Steve Leesman and they’re playing this.

chicken and the egg type of argument, which came first, the chicken and the egg. And Andrew was saying that, well, you know, if they get interest rates down, then more people will want to buy new homes, will be more affordable and they’ll be able to step in and do that. Steve steps in, well, if they raise a lower interest rates, well, then the price of the homes are going to go up. And I’m here to tell you that they’re both right.

They’re both right. In a normal market, in a normal market, the price of a home has an inverse relationship to interest rates. What do I mean? Well, when, you know, again, mortgage, normally people take, I’ll say a 15 or a 30 year mortgage. It’s a function of what they can afford to pay every single month. Just that simple.

That’s what it is. And if the price of money goes up, interest rates go up, well again, that portion of their mortgage, the interest portion goes up. So therefore something else has got to come down. Okay, insurance, home insurance has gone up. It’s not going to be that right now. That would be the principle of the home. I mean, the home price would have to come down, but there’s just not enough inventory. That is where we’re at.

today. The reason why our housing market is stalled is because of government. I’ve gone off on some, I’d have to say some pretty vicious rants over the past couple of weeks on the podcast, most certainly on the radio show when it comes to government workers. Maybe I’m showing a little bit of frustration, but you watch this happen. Let me give you an example. The house that I’m living in here,

(02:28.654)

Long Island had work done before we were moving in, while we were moving in. In order for me to get any of that work done, I had to pay people off. Essentially. That’s right, I had to pay people off. It’s actually, I don’t know how you go about getting a job. I don’t know what type of college degree you need to get this or what school you need to go to. Maybe it’s mafia you, but it’s expected. You gotta pay an expediter. You have to pay.

someone so you can actually get your permits done in order to get work done.

And listen, I’m in New York, which is, okay, notoriously tons of red tape, but it’s everywhere. It’s the same crap, you know, moving to Florida, building a house down there. I speak with the builder all the time and everything you’ve got to deal with. Do you understand that that’s an overwhelming bulk of what you’re paying when it comes to houses is permits and filing and bureaucratic bull excrement?

We all know that this is the case and they slow everything down and they make everything that much more difficult. It was actually, Andy Kessler in the Wall Street Journal, he had a pretty interesting piece this Monday, was talking about, in essence, holding this country back, red tape. I wrote a column about this several years ago entitled Red Tape Nation. And he was talking about a home builder, a home builder in Texas.

that has come up with a way essentially to print homes. Print homes, there’s no wood involved in this, it’s cement. 3D printed homes are not large, massive homes, but they work and they’re sturdy and they make sense. And it would be a problem solver for obviously a housing price that we have for a myriad of reasons, whether it be you wanna be dealing with all of the illegals that are coming in or you wanna be dealing with…

(04:33.614)

people that are homeless or do you want people with first time home buyers?

Can they sell these things? Not very difficult. Why? Well, because this is in Texas. Is Texas? Well, you know, I got my bureaucrats there and the regulators and it’s got to have wooden trusses that are like this. But this house doesn’t have wooden trust. Well, then what do we do? Again, you’ve got bureaucrats that can’t think, they’re unable to think. And this is this is what you do. Slows everything down. Again.

I finally, finally got the permit for my pool. Inspectors gotta come out. And yeah, I’ve got alarms on all of our doors here, open up the door, don’t have anything like that. I had to get separate alarms that make an ungodly noise if somebody opens up the door. The guy was in the house. He knew that I was gonna tear the bloody thing off the wall as soon as he left, but he had to check.

that box. I mean, window locks. You know, what, three inches for second floor window. I mean, just stupid crap. But again, these are people that don’t build anything and create. And I don’t know what is in their hearts or what type of people that they’re jealous of people that actually do go out and build and create things that they feel the need that they have to slow them down. But they reckon the country.

in more ways than one. I don’t know. I’m going off on a bit of a tangent here to some degree, but, you know, it’s kind of worth it. I read a column this morning. I read this magazine a long time. The New Yorker article in the New Yorker got my attention and it was about, essentially, it was about flying cars. Flying cars. And why the hell? And I got my attention because the old

(06:36.75)

70s, I think it was early 80s. I can’t remember the exact year it came out. Blade Runner, you know, fantastic film. Sci -fi, one of the best in my opinion. And you take a look, you go watch that movie, you see the technology from then that they present in the movie and a lot of the stuff, analog. I mean, they actually have pay phones in Blade Runner, which I think the year was 2019. I don’t know, it was supposed to take place, but they did have flying cars. And we haven’t gotten to that point.

And the whole column was talking about, you know, where we’re at today and various different thinkers out there and how bureaucracy and government and regulations is slowing down really great advancements. I mean, it was not as what we were done since since the internet. We got social media apps. Apps, I mean, what do we work on? I got this AI is this next big thing.

But man, oh man, everybody I think with like a flying car. And they actually cite different points in time where we make stupid mistakes. We freak out when it comes to a myriad of different things. And they talked, actually talked about a helipad on the top of the, well, what, I didn’t know what, was it MetLife now? MetLife building on the end of Park Avenue separates Park Avenue, Park Avenue South used to be the Pan Am building. This should be a,

helipad up there in the top and there was an accident. It was an accident and a few people got killed. Shut down.

Shut down, that’s it. Didn’t try to make it safer, didn’t try to fix promises. That’s it. Not gonna use that helipad anymore. And I think we do that to ourselves at some times nowadays. And all of these ridiculous government regulations, saw it during COVID overreach, gotta do something. And we just stifle innovation. And now as it turns around, we’re stifling home building here in the United States. No, it’s not interest rates.

(08:43.214)

up down sideways backwards and forwards the bureaucrats down there they could give a damn about interest rates watchdog on wallstreet .com