New and advanced product features, along with product quality, price, availability, and green or sustainable features are top priorities for contractors and builders in choosing which products to use in new homes or remodels. Builder Magazine released its annual Brand Use Study, which lists the top products used by builders, developers, and contractors.

More than 750 respondents nationwide shared their brand use practices within 52 building product categories, including cabinets, bath fixtures, flooring, exterior materials, and others. The products are used among single-family builders, builder-developers, general contractors, and multifamily builders.

The survey is broken down into each product category by listing products with the most brand familiarity, those products most often used, and perceptions over which brand offers the highest-quality products.

View the breakdown to see the most popular products in each category. (Note: The link will take you to a form to fill out before accessing the study.)

The majority of home sale contracts are settling on time, but 26% faced delays in February while 6% were terminated completely, according to the latest REALTORS® Confidence Index. The following chart shows the most common issues sparking a delay to closing.

© National Association of REALTORS®

The most common problems leading to a termination of the contract were related to appraisal issues (11%), obtaining financing (10%), and home inspection/environmental issues (9%).

Nevertheless, the housing market remains competitive. Respondents to the REALTORS® Confidence Index report an average of four offers for every house sold. Also, homes typically sold within 20 days—a record low since May 2011, when NAR started collecting such information. A year ago, homes typically sold within 36 days.

Builders ramped up construction of new homes last month, starting 1.74 million units in March—the highest rate in 14 years and a welcome sign that efforts are underway to meet strong buyer demand, Lawrence Yun, chief economist at the National Association of REALTORS®, writes on the association’s Economists’ Outlook blog. “As trade-up buyers purchase newly constructed homes, their prior homes will show up in MLSs and [provide] more choices for consumers,” Yun notes. It could take four to eight months for newly started homes to be completed, Yun adds, “so be patient with the improvement to inventory.”

The increase in housing production comes at a time when builders are facing rising material costs and soaring lumber prices, analysts note. Housing starts in March jumped 19.4% year over year, the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Census Bureau report. Broken out, single-family starts rose 15.3% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.24 million and were up nearly 20% in the first quarter of this year compared to the same time period in 2020. The multifamily sector, which includes apartment buildings and condos, rose nearly 31% to a pace of 501,000 units.

“Demand remains solid due to low mortgage rates and a thin level of inventory in the resale market, which is spurring the need for additional supply,” says Robert Dietz, chief economist at the National Association of Home Builders. “The test for the industry this year will be balancing growth and higher construction costs, given ongoing housing affordability challenges.”

Combined single-family and multifamily starts in March rose by the highest amounts in the Midwest, up 122.8% month over month—a jump economists attributed to favorable changes in seasonal weather patterns. The Northeast saw a 64% month-over-month jump, and the South recorded a 13.5% increase. The West was the only region to post a month-over-month decline, falling 13.6%.

Overall housing permits, a gauge of future production, rose 2.7% to a 1.77 million annual rate in March. Single-family permits increased 4.6% to a 1.2 million-unit rate while multifamily permits decreased 1.2% to a 567,000 pace. “Builder confidence remains strong, pointing to gains for single-family construction in 2021,” says Chuck Fowke, the NAHB’s chairman. “However, rising costs for most kinds of building materials continue to impede positive additional momentum in the market.”

Young professionals on the hunt for a new location may find incentives from states—even offers to pay off their student loan debt in exchange for purchasing a home.

Illinois and Maryland recently launched “SmartBuy” programs that will pay off student loan debt for young adults who get a mortgage in the state.

Sound too good to be true? There are eligibility requirements and caps that young pros will have to meet.

For example, Illinois is offering to pay up to $40,000 in student loans or a student loan balance that is 15% of the home purchase price, whichever is lower, Forbes.com reports on the program. The program is also providing up to $5,000 toward the down payment or closing costs. But the purchase price of the home is capped depending on the geographic location and some other factors. The upper limit is between $325,000 to about $500,000. In the Chicago area, eligible homeowners also must have a household income of no more than $109,200.

One potential obstacle to getting this deal: The $40,000 in debt relief must help pay all the student debt with the purchase of the home. No partial payments are allowed. If the home buyer owes more than $40,000, borrowers must pay off the remaining balance themselves. The goal is to help the young homeowner be free of student loan debt when they take on the mortgage.

Maryland has another version of the “SmartBuy” program, which provides a student loan payoff up to 15% of the home purchase price.

Several other states also offer versions of student loan debt reimbursement programs that are mostly geared to attracting more healthcare professionals to the area. For example, the Michigan State Loan Repayment Program will cover up to $200,000 in student loans for primary medical, dental, and mental healthcare providers if they agree to work full-time in Health Professional Shortage Areas at not-for-profit health clinics for two years. The California State Loan Repayment Program will pay student loans up to $50,000 for healthcare professionals who also commit to working in underserved medical communities for two years. View a list of more state offerings at Lifehacker.com.

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage continued to drop this week, heading back near the 3% range.

The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 3.04% this week, Freddie mac reports. Mortgage rates are still below a year ago and remain at historical lows, which has proven a boon for the housing market, economists note.

“Mortgage rates took another dip this week as the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage decreased by almost ten basis points, week over week,” says Sam Khater, Freddie Mac’s chief economist. “The economy is improving on the demand side and on the supply side, a variety of goods and materials remain scarce. As a result of this imbalance, pricing pressures are building and causing inflation to rise. Despite the pause in mortgage rates recently, we expect them to increase modestly for the remainder of this year.”

Freddie Mac reports the following national averages with mortgage rates for the week ending April 15:

• 30-year fixed-rate mortgages: averaged 3.04%, with an average 0.7 point, dropping from last week’s 3.13% average. Last year at this time, 30-year rates averaged 3.31%.
• 15-year fixed-rate mortgages: averaged 2.35%, with an average 0.7 point, falling from last week’s 2.42% average. A year ago, 15-year rates averaged 2.80%.
• 5-year hybrid adjustable-rate mortgages: averaged 2.80%, with an average 0.4 point, falling from last week’s 2.92%. A year ago, 5-year ARMs averaged 3.34%.

Freddie Mac reports average commitment rates along with average points to better reflect total upfront cost of obtaining the mortgage.

Foreign investment firms are reportedly making a big play for single-family homes in American suburbs.

These overseas investment firms traditionally have targeted office buildings, hotels, and shopping centers internationally. But they are seeing promise in buying or building rental homes—by the thousands—throughout the U.S., The Wall Street Journal reports. They’re targeted suburban neighborhood homes near big cities like Atlanta, Las Vegas, and Phoenix.

Foreign investors account for nearly one-third of institutional investment purchases of single-family rental homes, Alex Foshay, head of international capital markets at Newmark, a real estate services firm, told The Wall Street Journal. Their numbers have been elevated since the COVID-19 pandemic, Foshay notes.

That is contributing to the heated housing markets nationwide. More home shoppers may find themselves competing with these wealthy groups of investors while trying to purchase limited housing stock in suburban neighborhoods.

Last month, Allianz SE, a German insurer, said it was investing to buy more than $4 billion of U.S. rental homes. Canada’s Public Sector Pension Investment Board, in partnership with Pretium Partners LLC, is buying $700 million or around 2,000 U.S. homes.

Foreign investors are being drawn to the single-family rental market for the same reasons that U.S. investment firms are. They’re taking notice of the desire for renters to have more space, access to top suburban schools, and accessibility to suburban housing as the limited supply for new houses and high prices may be preventing some from being able to buy.

Commercial buildings left empty from the COVID-19 pandemic may find a new purpose as affordable housing. Empty hotels from a yearlong lack of travel and tourism as well as empty office buildings due to remote work could drive the trend of repurposing vacant commercial spaces.

“The demand for office space is continuing to change,” Andrew Trueblood, the D.C. Office of Planning director, told FOX Business. “I would say it has accelerated what we’re already beginning to see in terms of you don’t need…as much space per person, and especially as there is more opportunity to telework.”

These empty commercial spaces can be converted into affordable apartment buildings—at a time when calls within the housing industry are growing louder for more inventory to meet demand.

However, the process could prove expensive to convert empty buildings, and there are zoning challenges to address, too.

That said, “it wasn’t particularly difficult, it was just expensive…one of the most expensive things we did is we cut 25% of the floor space out of this building to create these courtyards that opened up the interior of the building for light,” explained John E. Akridge, a real estate developer in Washington, D.C., about one such conversion project with a Coast Guard warehouse.

Last summer, Ben Carson, who was the U.S. Housing and Urban Development secretary at the time, said that the growth of remote work could “free up a lot of commercial space, which can be converted to affordable housing.” George Ratiu, realtor.com®’s senior economist, had called the office-to-residential conversion a potential “win-win solution in some cities where you’re seeing declining lease renewals and a massive shortage of housing.”

But while some buildings may stand empty for now, the urban office sector is largely expected to rebound. Trueblood notes to FOX Business that “there will still be a presence and still be need for office space” in the future. However, more firms may look to lessen their office footprint to accommodate hybrid work schedules. Urban planners say that looking at repurposing any empty space could potentially help meet the demand for greater affordable housing.

Even prior to COVID, some transformations were already taking place. For example, aging factories, office buildings, and department stores in Cleveland had been repurposed to higher-end apartments—even some offering waterfront views. About 60 buildings in the city have been converted using state and federal tax credits. What’s more, about 2.5 million of Cleveland’s 4.5 million square feet of empty commercial space in the mid-2000s have been turned into housing or hotels, according to the Downtown Cleveland Alliance.

This March, a New York state lawmaker introduced legislation to allow the state to buy financially distressed commercial buildings and convert them into housing for low-income and homeless individuals. The bill, if approved, would allow the state government to purchase and convert office buildings and hotels that are up for sale.