Is Overbuilding Responsible for Excess Housing Inventory?

The President of the National Association of Home Builders says “The excess housing inventory in today’s market is the result of unprecedented foreclosures, not overbuilding.” Paul Jackson, Housing Wire, suggests this statement “borders on the certifiably insane ." I may be certifiably insane, but I think the NAHB position is closer to the truth.

Obviously, we have excess inventory. The amount is subject to debate, but arguments can be made for between 1.75 to 4 million excess units (see this Calculated Risk post, for example). Obviously, many of the excess homes are newly completed builder inventory. You can read the story behind the pictured subdivision here.  So, in a sense builders are responsible for at least a portion of the excess inventory. They built it, it’s empty, end of story.

But, of course, it’s not that simple. There are a lot of people who are living in substandard housing, in apartments, with their parents, with roommates, etc. who would be delighted to be living in these “excess” units. The problem is much of the excess is located in places people don’t want to live or can’t find jobs (read, for example, these depressing posts about Detroit in The Big Picture and The Weekly Standard). And, much of the excess is not affordable even at today’s depressed prices to the people who want the units.

I think Miami is a good example of what actually occurred. Here is a chart of residential permits issued in Miami between 1999 and November, 2008:

(click on images to open larger versions in a new window)

On it’s own, this is about as clear a case as you can get of overbuilding – permits obviously spiked between 2004 and 2006, which nicely dovetails with the peak of the subprime craziness. But, consider employment growth in Miami during the same period:

At the same time permits were peaking at around 45K per year, Miami was adding jobs at 100K a year. Can you really say builders were overbuilding when there are twice as many people with new jobs as units being added to supply? If anything, the numbers imply a housing shortage in the peak period. Here is a chart showing the ratio between new jobs and residential permits:

From mid-2002 through 2007 Miami was adding more jobs than housing units, and for most of this period it was adding around two jobs for every new housing unit. This was not an overbuilt market during that period.

In contrast, here is an equivalent chart for Houston:

Housing prices have held up relatively well in Houston, and most people do not consider it to have been one of the bubble markets. But, note Miami had substantially more jobs added per new unit than Houston did during this period. The data suggest Houston was relatively overbuilt compared to Miami.

In fact, the data suggest that maybe part of the problem in the bubble markets was builders didn’t build fast enough to keep pace with the demand created by new jobs (you can see similar charts for Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas, and many more markets here). I’m not ready to go so far as to suggest they should have done so – had lenders stuck to reasonable underwriting standards more of that demand would have shifted to the rental market and we would have seen higher rents and less vacancy in that segment, which I think we all agree in hindsight would have been better than putting people in houses they couldn’t afford.