Statistically Speaking: The Furniture Industry Eyes Growing Favorable Demographics While Housing Struggles to Meet Demand

January 19, 2022  by HFBusiness Staff in Business Strategy, Industry   

Housing Industry’s Struggle to Meet Demand The housing market had four distinct growth phases over the tenyear period that has brought it to today’s dilemma—namely, how to catch up with demand (Table A). Phase 1. 2011-2013: Post Great Recession. Coming out of the Great Recession the housing industry accelerated. Builders geared up, prices climbed, interest rates were low. The annual spending for new and existing homes grew over 20% each year in both 2012 and 2013. Prices climbed over 10% a year. Meanwhile the furniture industry struggled post-recession growing at an annual rate of 3% over the two years.

Phase 2. 2013-2017: Economic Growth. Things settled down for four years as the economy grew. The housing market averaged 7.1% growth over the four-year period and the furniture industry a similar 7.4% annual increase.

Phase 3. 2017-2019: Housing Industry Slumps. The housing industry got in a big hole between 2017 and 2019 when demographics dictated it should be growing. Over a two-year period, the housing market fell 1%. In 2018, sales were down 2.4% and up only 0.4% in 2019 as prices fell 0.7%. According to the Federal Reserve, declining affordability, higher mortgage rates, higher construction costs and declines in equity prices slowed the U.S. housing markets.

Phase 4. 2019-2021: Pandemic and Recovery. The pandemic brought a wave of low inventories and high demand and even higher prices. Builders powered through labor problems and new and existing home sales dollars grew annually just over 10% in 2020 and 2021. Meanwhile, couped-up pandemic consumers went wild buying furniture, with sales up 9.2% in 2020 and 21.5% in 2021 (preliminary) to an average of 15.2% for the two-year period.

This issue of Statistically Speaking looks at the housing industry’s recent struggles to address pent-up demand as household growth is set to further explode. Housing demand at its basic level is about building enough units to satisfy the annual increase in household formations plus replace older homes no longer habitable or units in geographic areas no longer desired. For the first time since the 1970s, when the Baby Boomers hit the home buying scene, home and apartment builders have scrambled to catch up in the last decade (2010 – 2020) as more households were formed than units built. In the last two years, the construction industry has tried to close the gap all while in the midst of a pandemic and its recovery. As shown in Table B and Figure 1, a historic housing crunch occurred between 1971 and 1980 as Baby Boomers began entering the housing market. After 1980, new housing completions were able to stay ahead of household formations until 2010, a 30-year stretch. Our current housing crisis has been a decade long one with 1.1 million fewer homes and apartments built since 2011 than households formed.

The housing industry is pushed forward by various drivers and stumbles when faced with industry barriers (Figure 2). Demographics are poised to be the primary industry driver as Millennials are currently entering their prime home buying ages. Alongside this driver is a barrier as older home owners are choosing to stay put as rising prices deter them from moving up. While household formations have stalled in recent years, there are indications that they are now on the rise. Low mortgage rates are also a key driver, but rapidly rising inflation will likely make those rates go higher. The two major barriers are low inventories and rising housing and apartment prices. And Fannie Mae predicts inventories will stay low for the next 10 years. Affordable prices for homes and rentals may have leveled off at the end of 2021, but no sign yet that they are falling. Rising apartment rates are a major economic concern going forward.

Alongside these housing industry’s consumer drivers and barriers is the construction industry with its own set. Unwavering demand is the main construction driver. However, labor and material shortages and supply chain bottlenecks and may further hinder the industry going forward (Figure 3). Lumber prices peaked in May of 2021 and fell 70% before year-end, but in December they began climbing again and the supply chain was still unstable at press time. Labor shortages appear to be easing. Adding fuel to the fire, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) reports 76% of builders in Fall of 2021 cited the low supply of buildable lots as critical.

Demographics
The housing industry not only has a lot of catching up to do, but is facing a tsunami of new households in the next 15 years that should bode well for the furniture and housing industries. In 2014, the age group 25 to 39 surpassed the older 40 to 54 segment in size as Millennials began to pour into ages 25 to 39. These post-college Millennials, though initially slow to get out on their own, are key drivers to household formations and the leading edge of primary furniture buyers. The smaller Generation X which now solidly sits in the 40 to 54 age group are in their prime income years and have driven the furniture industry in recent times. These higher earning 40-to-54-year-old consumers will grow as leading-edge Millennials transition into this older age segment. As shown in Table C, the important thing about 2022, is that this year both age groups key to the housing industry and especially the furniture industry will be increasing at the same time until around 2030. In 15 years, the Millennials will have aged into the 40 to 54 age group and the 25 to 39 age groups will start to decline as the smaller Generation Z emerges.

Housing
Over the last year housing starts geared up and began to dig out of the pandemic setbacks and address the pent-up demand. Recent November data from the Census Bureau signals a positive step forward. Table D details the monthly path for housing starts and housing completions beginning just before the pandemic in December 2019 through November 2021. During the two-month period at the end of February 2020 through April 2020, Covid-19 brought housing starts to trickle, falling 41%. But starts came roaring back last year and peaked at an annual rate of 1.725 million in March 2021 then struggled until November, when they jumped 11.8% over October to 1.68 million annual units, a significant indicator for the housing recovery (Table E). With supply chain disruptions, housing completions have become longer drawn-out affairs. Since the peak in March of last year of 1.5 million annualized completions, the number of finished houses, condos, and apartments in November is still 14.4% below that peak compared to March.

Both single-family and multi-family starts posted double digit one-month growth last November compared to the previous month. Single family starts of 1.17 million were 11.3% higher than October and multi-family starts in November were at an annualized rate of 506,000 units, up 12.9%. Year-to-date November 2020 to November 2021, starts increased 15.4% for the one-year period to an annualized rate of 1.58 million units with multi-family unit starts growing slightly faster (Table F). Single-family starts grew 14.7% over the one-year period to 1.12 million units (annual) and multi-family units increased 17.3% to 466,000 annualized units. Regionally, starts in the Northeast grew the fastest, up 24.2% overall (single-family and multi-family), followed by the West with 18.0%, the South at 14.4% and Midwest the lowest at 9.0%. The Northeast and West had the highest oneyear growth in multi-family unit starts, 32.3% and 33.2% increases respectively. The other three regions are a majority of single-family housing starts with the South showing the lowest growth in multifamily units at 7.3%.

While multi-family starts are growing quickly, for the total U.S. last year (November 2021 YTD), 70.6% of housing starts were single family (Table G). Leading the way was the South at 76.2% single family. Meanwhile, for the Northeast, multi-family units totaled over 50% of starts.

Housing Permits
Housing units permitted (seasonally adjusted at an annual rate) provides a window into the near future a few months ahead. And while not all permits materialize as housing starts, they are a key indicator of what lies ahead. Permits peaked last January 2021 at 1.88 million units and transformed approximately three months later in March as peak starts of 1.72 million (annual rate). Last January was the single highest month for permits since May of 2006, just prior to the Great Recession. Since January 2021, permits have followed a general up and down trend until September growing steadily through November to 1.71 million units (Table H). This three-month growth in permits will translate into starting in the first part of this year.

Housing Inventory
During the pandemic, housing inventories fell to 3.5 months in September, October and November of 2020, the lowest levels on record (since 1963). The month’s supply is the ratio of houses for sale to houses sold. The months’ supply indicates how long the current for-sale inventory would last given the current sales rate if no additional new houses were built (Table J). Inventories began to ease in March of last year with over 6-months of housing supply by the end of last year.

Housing Prices
Home prices exploded throughout the pandemic and through last year. The National Association of Realtors projects that prices softened a bit toward the end of last year 2021 and will continue to moderate and grow more slowly in 2022. In 2021, the median existing home price was estimated to be $340,200 and $385,200 for a new home. This is a 14.7% increase for existing home prices and 14.3% for new homes over one year. The National Association of Realtors forecasts prices to climb in 2022 - 2.8% for existing homes to a median price of $349,800 and 4.4% to $402,000 for new homes (Table K). Unfortunately, the rising prices will continue to keep new home buyers out of the market and stuck in a cycle of paying high rent without the ability to save for a down payment on a home.

The challenge for the furniture industry since the Great Recession has been an unrelenting loss of consumer share of dollars spent on paying for homes and apartments. The Consumer Price Index quantifies price increases not just for furniture and bedding, but also the CPI for rent for primary residences and another category called “owners’ equivalent rent of primary residence” which is defined as the amount of rent that would have to be paid in order to substitute a currently owned house as a rental property. Table I shows historically that as the furniture industry struggled to get prices up after the Great Recession, rents and owners’ equivalent rents grew steadily. The CPI for furniture and bedding fell 7.3% between 2010 and 2018. In 2019 the furniture industry finally saw an increase of 2.3% before the pandemic shoved prices down again. Then by November 2021 furniture prices had exceeded the 6.8% growth in overall inflation increasing 7.5% year-to-date. For rents and owners’ equivalent rents, since 2015 prices increased between 3.3% and 3.8% annually for both. In 2021 (November YTD) that growth slowed to 2.1% for rent increases and 2.4% for owners’ equivalent rent. Note that rent and home price growth are slower to show up in inflation figures. Rents usually don’t impact inflation until a lease turns over. So even though rent prices fell in 2021 in the CPI, recent month-to-month increases are some of the fastest in 20 years. Apartment List estimates that new lease price increases for apartment rents will be up 16.2% in 2021.

Mortgage Rates
Low interest rates have been a key driving force in home sales. In the second quarter of last year, 30-year fixed rates moved higher than 5/1-year hybrid adjustable mortgages and the gap has widened since (Table J). In the first quarter of 2019, a 30-year fixed rate was at 4.37%. 30-year rates hit their lowest point in 2020 Q4 at 2.76%. As of November 2021, a 30-year fixed rate was at 3.07% and a 5/1-year hybrid adjustable rate was at 2.51. Inflation is expected to take the rates higher in this year.

The end of 2021 was shaping up to be a good start to returning the housing and furniture industries to a steady pattern of demand and growth. That is, if the many economic and social challenges, as well as other unforeseen Covid obstacles, don’t derail the process.