Homebuilders are purposely delaying selling homes, and it’s intensifying the housing crisis

Source: Business Insider — 

Housing prices just won’t stop soaring, and in some ways it’s causing the market to simply cease to function.

Unlikely contributors to housing-market gridlock are the very homebuilders who should be flooding it with much-needed new inventory. With median housing prices hitting record highs all year, homebuilders are increasingly restraining home sales until they can build at a pace that matches demand, The Wall Street Journal’s Nicole Friedman reported.

In other words, corporate builders are saying no to people who want new houses, even though they can build them, because they’re already behind on houses they’ve sold but haven’t built yet. Post-pandemic issues have made construction just too expensive and inconvenient, they say.