118,000 finished houses with nobody in them. That is almost quadruple the record low of 31,000 in February 2022, and it sits close to the recent peak of 128,000 in January of this year.

Read past the industry framing on that number. It is not a market statistic. It is a stack of individual balance sheets, and on every one of them there is a line item running today: interest, taxes, insurance, utilities, landscaping, and the slow bleed of a house that shows a little worse each month it sits. If you read our briefing on planning around rate direction, this is where that carry cost actually lives. Not in a forecast. In a driveway.

You Are Not Just Competing With Builders. You Are Competing With Inventory.

New home sales ran at 628,000 in June, down 5.6% from a year earlier, with 9.3 months of supply against a balanced level near six (Census/HUD). The median new home price fell to $398,300, down 3.3% from May and 2.7% year over year, as builders leaned harder on discounts and incentives to move standing units.

Now put those two facts together. Prices are coming down while supply stays elevated.

Here is the operator read. When you price your next unit, you are not only competing against the builder across town. You are competing against 118,000 finished houses whose owners need out, and a seller who needs out will always beat your price. You cannot win that fight. You can only decline to be in it.

The Market Is Not Punishing Homebuilding

Buried in the same August release that produced the gloomy confidence headline, NAHB reported something more useful: custom home builders continue to report stronger market conditions than spec builders, and spec building remains weak as prospective buyers stay on the sidelines.

There is a second signal pointing the same direction.

Builders are pulling permits and then holding. They are not short of land or approvals. They are declining to start without a buyer.

That is the whole thesis in one data point. The market is sorting by who is carrying risk, not by who is building houses.

Re-Underwrite, Reprice the Incentive, Sell the Slot

01. Re-underwrite your standing inventory this week. Anything more than 90 days complete gets a decision, not a hope. Reprice it to move, or convert it to a lease-option or rental hold and stop pretending it is for sale. There is no third choice. “Wait for the market” is not a strategy, it is a monthly payment you have chosen to keep making.

02. Move incentive dollars from price to rate. This is the highest-leverage change in the piece. A price cut is permanent, it is public, and it lands in your comps for the next three units you sell. A rate buydown is a one-time cost that protects the appraisal and the comp behind it. With 63% of builders already running incentives and 35% cutting prices at an average of 6%, the question is not whether you will spend the money. It is whether you spend it in a form that damages your next sale.

03. Sell the slot, not the house. Package your next start as a defined product with a locked allowance schedule, a named start date, and a deposit at signing. You are selling a build slot and a delivery date. Buyers in this market will pay for a date, because almost nobody is confident enough to give them one.

SBGP conducts a full review of your sales process, marketing, and lead-to-contract conversion and builds a step-by-step 12-month plan across Sales and Marketing, so you can sell the next unit before you finance it rather than after.

Access your BPA →

One Move Per Segment, This Month

Build to a Contract, Not to a Hope

Carry cost is not a market condition. It is a decision you made months ago and are still paying for. The builders who look steady right now are not the ones who called the market correctly. They are the ones who quietly stopped putting their own capital at the front of the line and made the buyer commit first.

That is the contract-first advantage. Less exciting than a spec home in a hot market. Considerably more durable in this one.