{"id":6532,"date":"2012-04-12T06:30:03","date_gmt":"2012-04-12T12:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/?p=6532"},"modified":"2013-05-13T17:40:01","modified_gmt":"2013-05-13T23:40:01","slug":"little-by-little-idahos-hard-hit-housing-market-begins-to-revive","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/2012\/04\/12\/little-by-little-idahos-hard-hit-housing-market-begins-to-revive\/","title":{"rendered":"Little By Little, Idaho’s Hard-Hit Housing Market Begins To Revive"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Molly Messick \/ StateImpact Idaho<\/p>

Nine homes are under construction at a Coleman Homes development outside of Boise.<\/p><\/div>\n

Idaho was hit hard in the housing crash.\u00a0 For the better part of three years, the state\u2019s foreclosure rate was one of the highest in the nation.\u00a0 The Boise area saw the worst of it.\u00a0 That means it\u2019s been a while since this scene played out with any kind of regularity.<\/p>\n

<\/param><\/param><\/embed><\/object>Little By Little, Idaho’s Hard-Hit Housing Market Begins To Revive<\/a>
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Molly Messick \/ StateImpact Idaho<\/p>

In a few weeks, Lynne Smith will move into her new home.<\/p><\/div>\n

Lynne Smith pushes open the door of the home she\u2019ll move into in just a couple of weeks. “This is it!” she says.\u00a0 “It\u2019s just nice to come in and look around and say, ‘Oh, this is going to be my house!'”<\/p>\n

It\u2019s brand new.\u00a0 It even smells<\/em> new.<\/p>\n

“I can\u2019t wait,” Smith says.\u00a0 “You know, it\u2019s just me and my son, and he\u2019s already picking out the paint colors for his room… It\u2019s just really nice.\u00a0 He\u2019s super excited about it.”<\/p>\n

Some of the cities that fared worst in the housing bust are leading the way as home prices turn up.\u00a0 Think Phoenix, Arizona, Cape Coral, Florida, and our own Boise, Idaho.\u00a0 Lately, all three have seen home prices start to stage a turnaround \u2013 and prices are coming back faster than they are elsewhere in the country.<\/p>\n

<\/em>It was low interest rates and depressed home prices that drew Smith into the market.\u00a0 She thought she\u2019d buy a foreclosure, and snap up a good deal.\u00a0 Instead, the search was a slog.\u00a0 She saw a lot of homes that had been damaged, or neglected.\u00a0 For the better places, competition was fierce.<\/p>\n

“The things that are really nice and in good, clean shape that people actually took care of, they\u2019re gone in like a day,” she says.\u00a0 “We would call the listing agent, and they would say, ‘Oh yeah, we have multiple offers,’ or, ‘We just got that offer sealed up 15 minutes ago.’\u00a0 So \u2013 you really have to move quickly.”<\/p>\n

Frustrated, Smith started looking at new homes.\u00a0 She stumbled on what\u2019s more or less an open secret among builders right now: they\u2019re accepting less profit. \u00a0Suddenly, a new home seemed like a good decision.\u00a0 Smith isn\u2019t the only one reaching that conclusion.\u00a0 In Boise, building permits for single family homes are up 65 percent over last year.\u00a0 Nampa is also seeing an uptick, and Neil Jones has a front-row seat.<\/p>\n

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Molly Messick \/ StateImpact<\/p>

Neil Jones of the Nampa Building Department. The department's motto is "Building Safety Is No Accident."<\/p><\/div>\n

In his office recently, he thumbed through a stack of residential permit applications.\u00a0 Those are the sheaves of paper he reviews and approves before construction starts.\u00a0 He counted them off under his breath. \u00a0“Residential, that\u2019s a new home.\u00a0 Another new home,” he said.\u00a0 There were eleven in total.\u00a0 “Wow,” he said.\u00a0 “I’m busy.”<\/p>\n

<\/em>Jones used to be a contractor, himself.\u00a0 He watched the housing slump put a lot of people he knows out of work.\u00a0 Now, he says, that\u2019s starting to shift.\u00a0 Big homebuilders are doing most of the new construction, but the smaller guys are busy, too.\u00a0 “We\u2019re seeing a lot of individuals who typically do two or three houses, they\u2019ve already done those two or three,” Jones says.\u00a0 “They\u2019re back out there in the market, which tells me that things are changing over and starting to go back up.”<\/p>\n

The housing market isn\u2019t fueling itself.\u00a0 Since late last year, Idaho\u2019s unemployment rate has fallen to 8 percent, its lowest point in more than two years.\u00a0 The state\u2019s manufacturing sector has begun to improve.\u00a0 All of that means more of this: construction work underway, in this case on a new three-bedroom home just outside of Boise.\u00a0 The sound of hammers is music to Rick Lett\u2019s ears.<\/p>\n

“Everyone\u2019s getting busy,” Lett says.\u00a0 “Everyone\u2019s seeing it, and everyone\u2019s picking up. Everyone!”<\/p>\n

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Molly Messick \/ StateImpact Idaho<\/p>

Rick Lett is Coleman Homes' Director of Construction.<\/p><\/div>\n

Lett is the Director of Construction for Coleman Homes, an Idaho-based builder.\u00a0 As he says, they\u2019re busy.\u00a0 Coleman\u2019s sales have tripled since a year ago.\u00a0 Nine homes are going up in this neighborhood alone.\u00a0 Buyers\u2019 move-in dates are already scheduled.<\/p>\n

“One month, this whole street will be done.\u00a0 You know, and then we\u2019re building down the other street.\u00a0 By the end of July, August, all 30 homes will be completed,” he says.\u00a0 There will be grass where there’s now bare dirt.\u00a0 It will look like a neighborhood.<\/em><\/p>\n

A new sense of optimism is setting in, that much is clear.\u00a0 And according to regional housing expert Robert Lang, that’s warranted.\u00a0 The improvements in Boise\u2019s housing market are<\/em> a good sign. But, Lang says, “the question now is how sustainable that is.”<\/p>\n

<\/em>Lang is the director of Brookings Mountain West.\u00a0 He says yes, cities like Boise and Phoenix and Cape Coral, Florida do appear to be turning up.\u00a0 But it may be in part because <\/em>they fared so badly that they\u2019re improving now.<\/p>\n

“Real estate that is overbuilt is a drag,” he says.\u00a0 “And it kills, like, you know, a household\u2019s budget because they\u2019re suddenly underwater.\u00a0 It kills construction, because nobody wants to build an office building anymore.\u00a0 When you start to recover, there\u2019s been a turnover in who owns the buildings.\u00a0 And it begins to be a driver of economic development.”<\/p>\n

In other words, when a housing market has cratered, buyers are drawn in.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s important to remember, Lang says, just how far hard-hit housing markets fell.\u00a0 In Boise, home prices remain more than 40 percent below where they were in 2006.\u00a0 They might be rising impressively now, but that\u2019s taking a short-term view.\u00a0 Like most other cities, Boise isn\u2019t out of the woods yet.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Idaho was hit hard in the housing crash.\u00a0 For the better part of three years, the state\u2019s foreclosure rate was one of the highest in the nation.\u00a0 The Boise area saw the worst of it.\u00a0 That means it\u2019s been a while since this scene played out with any kind of regularity. Little By Little, Idaho’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":46,"featured_media":6538,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[13],"tags":[68,57,40,46],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6532"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/46"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6532"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6532\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6549,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6532\/revisions\/6549"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6538"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6532"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6532"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stateimpact.npr.org\/idaho\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6532"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}