“A lot of the sub-contractors are seeing an increase in business, yet they’re reluctant to hire staff or have an inability to hire skilled labor, so we’re seeing delays with framers coming onto our properties to frame the houses, we’re seeing challenges with drywall finishers and painters,” says Paul.

Many builders are also seeing supply constraints, as they did not expect to see such a surge in demand. Demand is strong in large part because there is such a small supply of existing homes for sale nationwide, and because banks have been exceedingly slow to work through foreclosures in some states.

(Read More: Home Prices See Record Gain in April)

“About one third of homes sold are completed, down pretty significantly from where we were earlier in the cycle, which was in the 50 to 60 percent range,” notes David Goldberg, an analyst at UBS.

While the major public builders have not voiced concern publicly over risks to their backlogs, the analysts that cover them say if rates continue to rise, they will not be able to ignore it.

—By CNBC’s Diana Olick. Follow her on Twitter @Diana_Olick or on Facebook atfacebook.com/DianaOlickCNBC.

Questions? Comments? RealtyCheck@cnbc.com

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100849156

“I think it will be a pretty good report for Toll. The high-end and move-up markets is where it’s at right now,” said David Goldberg, a home builder analyst at UBS. “Pricing is improving.”

(Read More: Home Builders Get Jitters for First Time in a Year.)

Toll reported very strong earnings last quarter, with big jumps in both sales and income and a drop in cancellation rates. There had been concern that the looming “fiscal cliff” would hit Toll’s higher-end customers, but that did not come to pass.

While other home builders have seen big jumps in their stock prices over the past year, Toll is up just under 3 percent from a year ago. However, it is up nearly 25 percent from last November, when it had taken it a big dip.

(Read More: Mortgage Mess Still Mires US Housing Recovery.)

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100470583

(Read More: New Housing Fears: Home Prices Rising Too Fast?)

The PHLX index closed at an all-time high on July 18, 2005. It then dropped a staggering 81 percent to a trough in March of 2009. It has made a remarkable comeback in just the past year and a half but is still 34 percent below that peak in 2005. Only one component of the index, Texas-based Lennox International, a provider of climate control solutions for heating, air conditioning and refrigeration markets, is above its 2005 peak.

The overall quick pick-up in the home builders has some calling the stocks overvalued. They did, in fact, take a pause last fall, as some analysts downgraded various builders as being too hot for the fundamentals. Then come December, they began climbing again.

“Just because the stocks are overvalued doesn’t mean they are not going to go up more,” says David Goldberg, a housing analyst at UBS. “It’s a momentum play.”

(Read More: Foreclosure Fixer-Uppers Help Boost Remodeling)

Goldberg warns, however, that there is a lot of growth baked into these stock valuations for 2013, expectations that may be tough to meet. Big builders like Lennar and DR Horton continue to report growth in new orders, but in their latest reports that growth didn’t meet expectations, and the stocks responded accordingly.

“If you’re betting on a deeply sloping line that keeps going up, you get very sensitive to slowing growth rates,” notes Goldberg.

Expectations for housing starts and new home sales are both in the 20 percent range for 2013. Granted they are both coming off very small volumes historically, but those are still big expectations to meet. They very well could exceed those expectations, given the sheer optimism in the housing market today, but investors going in should still pay attention to fundamentals and to diminishing, but still-existing, headwinds.

(Read More: Shiller: Housing Malaise Could Resemble Japan’s Lost Decade)

Article source: http://www.cnbc.com/id/100405275