Home builders, it’s sometimes taken for granted, are in the consumer durables business, among others. The list includes marketing, logistics, real estate investment, land development, finance, manufacturing, and you name it.
Some of them–home builders, that is–are trying to act more that way, even though playing the buy-low-sell-high asymmetries of lots, labor, and lending has proven to be a reliable, if cyclical strategy, tied to booms and busts. Some of them are even waking up to an acknowledgment of the greatest asymmetry of all–that all of us need shelter of one sort or other to survive–that [almost] always tilts the playing field in their favor…read more