“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

Zillow on Thursday released new data on the potential impact of Facebook Inc.’s 
 

Facebook Inc.
Latest from The Business Journals
Qualys files for 0M IPOUBS to sue Nasdaq over 0M Facebook IPO lossCountdown: Top 10 most-popular social media sites

Follow this company




IPO on real estate in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Zillow is a home and real estate marketplace that aims to empower consumers with information and tools to make decisions about homes, real estate and mortgages.

The company suggests that for cities near the social networking company’s Menlo Park headquarters, median home values are more than $2 million. In nearby places such as San Jose or Francisco, buyers can pay a quarter of the amount for the same home.

During the three months between Facebook’s (NASDAQ:FB) IPO filing and its IPO debut, Zillow noted an upward trend of $1 million plus homes for sale — the number of $1 million listings in Menlo Park increased 87 percent during this time period.

Zillow also analyzed what a $1 million, 1,580-square-foot home in Menlo Park would buy elsewhere around the country.

Click here to see Zillow’s graphic representing the data.

Written by Lisa Sibley. She can be reached at 408.299.1830 or lsibley@bizjournals.com.

See all your followed company news on your personalized dashboard.

To access the full benefits of bizWatch and receive a weekly email with aggregated news on all the companies you are following, please provide your email address below.

You must have a bizjournals account to follow a company.
Please Log In or Register.

Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanjose/news/2012/06/07/zillow-weighs-on-facebook-effect-on.html