Momo Focus - Momo Homes

Momo Focus graphic headline, which says "Better homes and dryer balls".

Changing the world, one home at a time

Written by Charles Gale on October 11, 2023. Posted in Momo Focus, Uncategorized.

The Momo Focus is our biweekly roundup of news about the future of factory-perfect sustainable homebuilding.

Hi,

Indulge me for a moment, but I think our homes can change the world.

Too much?

Okay, how about this: I think our homes can nudge the world in a better direction.

Ever read Charles Duhigg’s book “The Power of Habit“? Duhigg argues that there are some habits – like making the bed in the morning or starting a fitness regimen – that catalyze a chain of other good habits.

Duhigg calls these “keystone habits.” And my gut feeling (or maybe it’s just my delusional hope) is that living in a Momo home can be a kind of keystone habit.

Here’s what I mean …

Say you buy a Momo home because it’s a great value. But then you’re amazed by the quality of the construction. You start to realize you’re saving a ton of money on your energy bills because of the way we’ve incorporated principles from passive design. Maybe you take advantage of the tax rebates on solar panels, so now you’re not only paying next to nothing for home energy, you can charge your EV and ebike for free, too. Whoa! Okay … now maybe you’re creating so much energy that – if you’re connected to the grid, or a microgrid – you can start selling your power in the marketplace and making a bit of income on the side. Then, because our homes are smart enough to track your carbon score, maybe you can start to drive that score down to zero. Maybe you can sell the offset. Maybe your neighbors are doing the same thing. Maybe you have a friendly competition, which you track via an online community. Maybe a bunch of neighborhoods start to do the same thing, until suddenly there’s a tipping point and we all look up and see that the world is full of clean energy, healthy air, zippy cars, and homes that feel like castles.

Sounds like sci-fi, right? And yes, some of it is. At least at the moment.

But much of this is already happening and all of it could happen.

Just sayin’.

Here’s this week’s roundup. …

Snapshots

Who says insulation ain’t sexy?

The Switch is On writes that “Deep weatherization (such as adding insulation) can save most households between $500-$800 per year just by making the home more efficient.”

You go, utilities!

Canary Media reports that “Twenty-five utility companies have entered the ’2030 Club’ by enacting ambitious, voluntary goals for that timeframe, above and beyond any state-level mandates that apply to them.” Nice.

Fighting global warming takes dryer balls

Katharine Hayhoe writes on her Substack that “Dryer balls reduce drying time by allowing hot air to circulate around the dryer more efficiently by creating space between your clothes in the dryer. This can reduce total drying time by up to 25 percent.”

Tower of power

A New York-based engineer named Jim Bardia has introduced a design for a freestanding combination wind- and solar-powered EV charger. Check out the IEEE Spectrum article. (I know this isn’t really relevant to homebuilding, and it’s only tangentially related to the home as an energy system. I just included it here because … well, it’s cool.)

The home economy

Eye on Housing: August Gains for Private Residential Construction Spending

NAHB analysis of Census Construction Spending data shows that private residential construction spending rose 0.6% in August. Read the full article.

Black Knight: Home Prices Set Yet Another Record in August

Highlights from the mortgage-data company’s latest release:

Home prices rose a seasonally adjusted 0.68% from July; August’s non-adjusted gain (0.24%) was more than 60% larger than the 25-year same-month average (0.15%).
Along with a lower starting point due to late-2022 price drops, August’s increase was enough to push the annual rate of home price growth to 3.8%, up from 2.4% in July and just 0.25% back in May.
According to the ICE Home Price Index (formerly the Black Knight HPI), this marked the third consecutive month of home price growth reacceleration after annual home price growth slowed to effectively flat earlier this year

Bill McBride: But home prices aren’t rising everywhere

McBride, author of the Calculated Risk Substack, noted that “In August, 11 states and D.C. were below their previous peaks, seasonally adjusted.” Notables include: Austin, Boise, and much of Utah, Arizona, and Hawaii.

Eye on Housing: Strong Job Gains in September

Job growth remained solid in September as the Fed fights against inflation. In fact, the recent jobs data has been stronger than most economists expected and is a reminder that GDP growth for the third quarter will be very strong and inflation risks persist. Read the full article.

Builder news

I have seen the future of building and its name is offsite

The new issue of “Offsite Builder” is out and Gary Fleisher’s editor’s note gives “Seven Reasons to Be Optimistic About Offsite’s Future”, including time savings, quality, safety, and more. The issue also includes articles on overcoming objections to offsite building, the circular economy, and the power of a gemba walk.

John Burns: Where’s the reset in building-products prices?

Up 40% since 2019, the cost of building materials has not, for the most part, come back down. John Burns Research and Consulting reports on recent price increases, including:

Roofing: 5%–8%
Insulation: 6%–10%
Gypsum wallboard: Up to 20%

Eye on Housing: Lot Values Trail Behind Inflation

Lot values for single-family detached spec homes continued to rise in 2022, with the national value and six out of nine Census divisions setting new nominal records, according to NAHB’s analysis of the Census Bureau’s Survey of Construction (SOC) data. Read the full article.

Buyer news

Eye on Housing: Number of 5,000+ Square Foot Homes Down in 2022

According to the annual data from the Census Bureau’s Survey of Construction (SOC), a total of 29,000 5,000+ square-foot homes were started in 2022, down from 33,000 in 2021. Read the full article.

Eye on Housing: Patios Are Increasingly Popular on New Homes

The share of homes with patios edged up to another record high last year. Of the roughly one million single-family homes started in 2022, 63.3% percent came with patios—up from 63.0% in 2021, and the seventh consecutive year of setting a new record. Read the full article.

Recent blog posts

Here are the blog articles we’ve published since the last Momo Focus.

Cheers,

Jeff

Jeff Williams is the chief marketing officer for Momo Homes.

Momo Focus graphic -- a small blue and white house on a white background -- with the headline "Thinking small(er)".

Lots of smaller lots

Written by Charles Gale on September 28, 2023. Posted in Housing Economy, Momo Focus.

Somewhat surprisingly, the share of small home lots just hit a record high.

Eye on Housing reports that “42 percent of new single-family detached homes sold in 2022 were built on lots under 7,000 square feet, that is 0.16 of an acre.”

It’s the highest share on record, and challenges recent assumptions.

Why?

The article suggests the change “reflects unprecedented lot shortages confronted by home builders during the pandemic housing boom, as well as their attempts to make new homes more affordable.”

Another possibility is that people just don’t want to mow a big lawn.

(Or am I projecting?)

Either way, we’ll keep an eye on the trend and see if it holds.

The home economy

In other housing industry news …

Housing starts are down

This from Eye on Housing: “Higher mortgage rates averaging above 7% put a damper on single-family production in August, as builders also continue to face supply-side challenges in the form of elevated construction costs, a lack of skilled labor and a shortage of buildable lots.” I know, I know. We’re working on it.

What’s new with MEW?

Bill McBride reviews the state of mortgage equity withdrawals, noting that “In Q2 2023, mortgage debt increased to $90 billion, up from $55 billion in Q1, and down from the cycle peak of $471 billion in Q2 2021.”

Massive room to grow

Eye on Housing reports that modular and panelized homes accounted for just 2 percent of the single-family-home market in 2022. (We can’t wait to change that.)

Limited inventory, higher rates

Calculated Risk and Eye on Housing weigh in on the August decline in home sales, which are down 15 percent year-over-year.

This may be what a soft landing looks like

Brad DeLong writes that “CPI core inflation has been running at 2.5%/year. When you take account of the persistent wedge between the CPI and the PCE index that is the Federal Reserve’s preferred target measure, that is what is needed to get 2%/year PCE chain-index inflation.”

Snapshots

Hot and cold

The Washington Post has a great feature on our fraught relationship with air conditioning. Trouble is, the cooler we make it inside, the hotter we make it outside. …

Getting pumped

… unless we’re using heat pumps. Which more of us will be doing.

The AP reports that “A group of 25 state governors that make up the U.S. Climate Alliance and the Biden administration announced a pledge Thursday to quadruple the number of heat pumps in U.S. homes by 2030, from 4.7 million to 20 million.

Which is cool.

Renewables are crushing it

It’s hard to overstate the momentum of clean energy. Here are three articles that give you an idea:

Climate and Capital Media: “It’s the solar economy stupid.”

Solar and battery growth are now outpacing even the most bullish outlooks. BloombergNEF, which has closely followed the sector for almost two decades, now predicts the world will add 392 gigawatts of solar power in 2023 alone! To understand the impact, consider that just one gigawatt (GW) is roughly the output of two coal-fired power units , enough energy to power 750,000 homes. This translates into new solar capacity to power 294 million homes.

The Guardian: “‘Staggering’ green growth gives hope for 1.5C, says global energy chief.”

The prospects of the world staying within the 1.5C limit on global heating have brightened owing to the “staggering” growth of renewable energy and green investment in the past two years, the chief of the world’s energy watchdog has said.

Canary Media: “Florida is now adding more solar power than any other state.”

Florida has long ranked a distant third place behind California and Texas in installed solar, but it’s now installing more solar panels than any other state — despite a policy landscape that’s considerably more challenging than in other states.

Post haste

Check out Mike’s most recent blog posts:

Cheers,

Jeff

Jeff Williams is the chief marketing officer for Momo Homes.

Momo Focus graphic. There's a small blue-and-white image of a house with solar panels and the title Stormy Weather.

Housing is a keystone solution

Written by Charles Gale on September 8, 2023. Posted in Momo Focus.

The Momo Focus is a biweekly roundup of news about the global transition to sustainable homebuilding.

Hi.

On Aug. 30, Hurricane Idalia blew into the Big Bend of Florida and wrecking-balled its way across the state.

In some ways, the damage wasn’t too bad. The storm hit a less-populated part of the state and, thankfully, no one died as a direct result of the storm.

But truth be told, you can’t look at any photo of smashed or flooded homes and say that the destruction was anything short of heartbreaking.

Of course, as a CNN article details, the story is one of heartbreak nested inside heartbreak: “Human-caused climate change is wreaking havoc on the Gulf Coast, which is already experiencing some of the fastest sea level rise in the world. As the ocean swallows shore, it makes the impacts of storm surge and flooding more dangerous for the communities in these low-lying areas.”

As these kinds of stories become more common, it’s easy to become numb. But there are solutions at hand, and the way we build homes is a vital one.

For example, we can frame homes in steel and anchor them to steel footings systems to make them more storm-resistant. And we can build them solar-ready to make their energy systems more resilient during grid outages.

If you want to see what renewables-powered resiliency looks like, check out this BBC article on Babcock Ranch, which weathered Hurricane Ian almost unscathed:

“The ranch, which opened in 2018 and is around five times the size of Manhattan Island, is like a picture-postcard, with neatly manicured lawns, vibrant green golf courses, forest trails and cycle paths. Residents zip around in solar-powered golf carts, kayak on the lakes, birdwatch, and congregate at the community pools. But the beautiful aesthetics have a dual purpose: the lakes double up as retaining ponds to protect houses from floods, streets are designed to absorb excess rainfall, and the community hall is reinforced as a storm shelter. A large 870-acre solar panel farm powers the entire development, as well as surrounding communities – making Babcock Ranch America’s first solar-powered town.”

It is difficult to get a utility company to understand renewable energy when their income depends on NOT understanding it

Canary Media reports that “a broad and unlikely coalition has united behind a proposal that would finally let community solar flourish in California. Utilities are trying to stop it.”

Sigh.