Industry Updates

Spend enough time in this industry, and you start to recognize a pattern. It’s rarely the loud, obvious shifts that cause the most damage. It’s the quiet misreads – the moments where the signal is there, but the interpretation is off. Right now, the housing market is full of those signals. Price cuts. Slower sales. Rising inventory. Elevated rates. Each of them is real. Each of them is measurable. And each of them is easy to misunderstand. What matters isn’t just what’s happening; it’s how builders interpret what’s happening and how they respond. Here are five signals showing up across…

Our Mission as an Association – to Promote Building, Protect Housing, and Elevate Communities – guides what we do in the advocacy space. There are two ways to get things done in government – either you convince people in power to do the right thing, or you find people who will do the right thing and help put them in place. While we will engage in a number of political races this year, and we are tracking closely the proposals in Olympia, we have also identified a number of key local issues we will seek to address this year. Land…

A busy week in Olympia was capped off today with a hearing on a proposal to enforce the first state income tax in over 90 years. Not only does this call into question the entire tax structure in Washington State, but it has significant impacts to home building. While proponents attempt to convince the public that it will only apply to the very wealthy, we know that a tax on someone today is a tax on everyone tomorrow. Time after time taxes the legislature has voted to broaden the collection of taxes. When asked why Washingtonians should trust that the…

The Federal Reserve held rates steady at its January meeting, as inflation remains elevated at 2.7%. Economic growth remains in the good-not-great range, as the labor market showed clear signs of cooling during the second half of 2025. Such an economic backdrop would suggest continued easing for monetary policy. The 10-year Treasury rate is near 4.25%, and the 30-year fixed-rate mortgage is approximately 6.1%. Mortgage rates moved lower last week on the prior announcement that Fannie and Freddie would acquire $200 billion in mortgage-backed securities (MBS) as part of the administration’s effort to improve housing affordability. While most market analysts expect additional…