Kitchen rends and lumber futures: The lowdown in Albuquerque’s Real Estate market
(Transcript Snippet): ” Tego:
Let’s talk about kitchen to real quick. Oh, I, I brought up the wrong wrong chart. What did I do with it here? Did it go here? It went. Okay. So I love this the headline on this story, it was kitchens you know, stirring the pot COVID customer desires reveal, and then the S the sub-headline was something like spoiler alert, kitchen offices are out, which is interesting. And I, I know some people like them, but for the most part, kitchen offices are out. Cause now everybody just wants their home office.
Tracy:
Well, and they want space. They’re tired of being in the kitchen altogether. Right. We need to move around. Plus, you know, kitchen office kind of leaves a mess. Usually, at least for me, it would, I leave my papers all over the table and everything. Yeah. Unlike you who have a nice, neat clean desk. So, Tracy, what
Tego:
Do you see in kitchens that, that has been a big trend for this year and what people like and what people want.
Tracy:
Yeah. I noticed there’s been more of that darker stainless. I don’t remember what it’s called. It’s like a black stainless appliances. Yup. I’ve seen a lot of those. I’ve seen a lot more refrigerators that have computer door, you know, like a screen in the door where you can program it and you can have your Alexa or whatever, your whole house, your whole house automation through your fridge. I know, I know I said it and I thought, oh, ours is going to be saying, what can I help you with right now? But the screen where there’s like, you automate your home off your fridge and me personally, I’ve seen our friends have that. And I’m like, yeah, I don’t think I want to do that from my refrigerator door, but you know, whatever. What have you seen
Tego:
Big open kitchens, definitely the trend. You look at what the builders are building right now. You know, the production builders, you know, open, airy, open to a great room, open to a den, open to a dining room is definitely the thing. The
Tracy:
Other thing I’ve seen is bigger islands, bigger islands, more seating around islands, a little less, maybe even in live in dining space, like for dining tables, definitely not formal dining rooms, but more of a dining note in addition to a big island. Yeah.
Tego:
The other thing we see a lot of these waterfall islands, where they with the course are granted that that goes all the way down to the floor on the side. So that’s, that’s a big big trend for sure. And then, like I said, the desks are kind of out
Tracy:
Get that home office into a different place. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. I think, you know, we were still, Zoom’s not going away or all the other ones, Google meets all the different venues for online meetings. But we’re seeing everybody get a lot better at having like a set behind him. Like we have here, right. Where even if they’re in the bedroom, they’ve learned how to use the pretend you’re in The Bahamas or those types of things. So well, one
Tego:
Thing though, that, that did come up is when they were talking about that, you know, the built-in office or desk in the kitchen is kids spaces for kids, a homework station. Now I know like some homes we’ve seen here in town, like Hakes brothers has a model that has the home that has the kitchen, and then they’ve got just this little nook across the way. That’s like a homework station, which is perfect.
Tracy:
Does that too. Yeah. Yeah. So, so anyway, those are some, it gives you some counters up higher too. So you can interact with like, if you have kids there at that home office nook. But it kind of hides the desk itself, which is kind of nice if you’re like me. Yeah. So the other thing that happened this week, Tigo lumber, so lumber futures, right? We’ve been talking about the cost to build lately, get to a point where real estate agents
Tego:
Are talking about lumber futures. Well, here we are.
Tracy:
So four months now we’ve been talking about the rising cost of building a new home and lumber prices had shot up significantly. Right. And it was adding huge percentages to the build cost. In addition to other things there’s other things cement has gone way up, there’s other trades, trades people and wages and everything, but lumber futures in the last week or two have come down. So we’re hoping that, you know, down the road six weeks or whatever, that, that translates into better lumber prices. I know we talked to lawn Fon. Who’s a well-known builder’s lender. She’s very well known as a construction for her construction lending she’s with Flagstar bank. And you know, be curious to see what she’s seeing when she’s getting bids and things from builders are seeing what their bids look like for their loan. Right, right. To keep up with it and see if the lumber prices truly do come down based on what we’re seeing in the commodity market. Yeah. It’s like all these confusing thoughts going through my head.
Tego:
You know, it’s, it’s strange that we’re, we’re talking about lumber prices, but it really does impact as a huge impact on the cost of construction. And, and we’ve said it before, and we’ll say it here again, is it, you know, new homes, new construction homes in Albuquerque, you know, pretty the starting levels around $300,000.
Tracy:
Now it’s pretty hard to get something under two under three. And honestly, a lot of the new home builders pulled DDR Hart and Hakes Twilight Abrazo. I know there are others, you know, they’re not there in the threes, in the fours and the fives and the sixes and the sevens, you know, for, for new home construction, we’re not talking about custom, hire an architect, hire a builder, find a lot. This is just production or, I mean, they’re not all production. Some of them are kind of semi custom, local builders and things, but you know, used to be, you could find a Dr. Horton for 200,000, like a year ago, we looked at some that were being built by Cleveland high school in Rio Rancho. And they were around 225 to 235. Yeah. Now they’re 300.