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Want more housing market stories from Lance Lamberts ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter. As public homebuilders work to clear rising levels of unsold completed inventory in softer Sun Belt housing markets, theyre not only upping their incentive spend for homebuyerstheyre also stepping up efforts to attract the housing markets biggest investor group: mom-and-pop landlords. Look no further than this week Lennar launching the Lennar Investor Marketplace. The homebuilderwhich has a $34 billion market capitalizationsays the portal allows investors at any level to browse curated new homes and make informed, data-driven decisions. After creating an account, investors can view Lennar homes for sale nationwide. For the Florida build below in Manatee County, the site displays Lennars current offer (a 7/6 ARM at a 4.99% interest rate) along with the projected rental yield based on estimated rent and cash flow. Lennars new investor site automatically inputs several figures (including expected monthly rent, down payment, and home price appreciation) to calculate the yield/return for the given home. It might be wise to take those assumptionsin particular for future home price appreciationwith a grain of salt. The good news is that the site also allows investors to adjust those figures to see how those assumptions would shift the return/yield. The fact that Lennar just built and launched an investor marketplace comes as unsold completed single-family new construction has climbed to a 15-year high: June 2018 > 62,000 June 2019 > 79,000 June 2020 > 66,000 June 2021 > 34,000 June 2022 > 38,000 June 2023 > 69,000 June 2024 > 99,000 June 2025 > 119,000 The June 2025 figure (119,000 unsold completed new homes) published last week is the highest level since July 2009 (126,000). While there has been an increase in slack in the new construction market, it isnt evenly distributed. The greatest softnessand build up in both unsold resale inventory for sale and unsold completed new homes for salecan be found in pockets of the Mountain West, Southwest, and Southeast. In particular, housing markets like Tampa, Austin, San Antonio, Nashville, Dallas, Cape Coral, and Punta Gorda. !function(){"use strict";window.addEventListener("message",function(a){if(void 0!==a.data["datawrapper-height"]){var e=document.querySelectorAll("iframe");for(var t in a.data["datawrapper-height"])for(var r,i=0;r=e[i];i++)if(r.contentWindow===a.source){var d=a.data["datawrapper-height"][t]+"px";r.style.height=d}}})}(); Among homebuilders trying to prevent a bigger pullback in sales amid this softer housing market environment, Lennar is the most aggressive builder on the incentive front. Last quarter, Lennar spent the equivalent of 13.3% of the final sales price on sales incentives, such as rate buydowns. For a $400,000 home, that translates to $53,200 in incentives. According to John Burns Research and Consulting [see their historical chart here], thats the highest incentive level Lennar has offered since 2009and its significantly higher than Lennars cycle low in Q2 2022, when it spent 1.5% of the final sales price on sales incentives. Big picture: Theres greater slack in the new construction market now than a few years ago, giving buyers and investors some leverage in certain markets to negotiate better deals with homebuilders.
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Another reason to love the last weeks of summer: You may be able to see the northern lights tonight and tomorrow night in over a dozen northern states. If you missed the recent Perseid meteor shower, don’t fret, this light show is forecast to run Monday, August 18 through Wednesday, August 20, in Washington, Idaho, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Vermont, New Hampshire, Maine, and Alaska, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA) Space Weather Prediction Center. The agencys three-day forecast is predicting minor, G1 geomagnetic storms (on a scale of G1 to G5). During these storms, a stream of solar wind from a coronal hole on the sun creates the aurorasor swaths of blue, green, and purple in the skywhen it reaches Earth. When is the best time to see the northern lights? The aurora borealis is usually best observed after sunset or just before sunrise, away from well-lit areas, per the NOAA. The best time to see this week’s northern lights is between 10 p.m. and 4 a.m., according to ABC News, as the moon is expected to rise in the early morning hours, making the sky appear even darker and increasing the chance of seeing swaths of pink and green light. The NOAA predicts increased solar activity will remain high through 2025 and into 2026 as a result of an 11-year sun cycle peaking through October. You can track the aurora on the NOAAs page, where the agency is providing updates.
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E-Commerce
The targeted murder of United Healthcare CEO Brian Thompson last December put the business world on alert. Companies beyond the insurance and healthcare industries began ramping up security for founders and CEOs, worried that Thompson’s death (and some of the publics reaction to it), along with rising cyberattacks and death threats, could increase real-world risks for any business leader. That has led to a substantial increase in security spending, and a new study from the Financial Times finds that no company is spending more to protect its CEO than Meta. Security spending was up more than 10% last year at the parent company of Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp, with $27 million spent to protect Mark Zuckerberg$3 million more than in 2023. We believe that Mr. Zuckerbergs role puts him in a unique position: He is synonymous with Meta and, as a result, negative sentiment regarding our company is directly associated with, and often transferred to, Mr. Zuckerberg, the company says in its 2025 proxy statement. Google parent Alphabet and Amazon also saw increases of more than 10% in protection costs last year. Altogether, the 10 major tech firms spent more than $45 million to protect their leaders. Metas spending dwarfed all others. The next highest was Alphabet, which allocated $6.8 million to protect Sundar Pichai. Coinbase spent nearly as much, dedicating $6.2 million to guard CEO Brian Armstrong. The big question on many minds, though, is how much is being spent to protect Elon Musk, arguably the most polarizing of the tech CEOs. The answer isnt entirely clear. Only one of his companies, Tesla, is public, and it disclosed spending $500,000 to protect Musk last year (down from $2.4 million in 2023). SpaceX and xAI are private and did not disclose figures. Musk also owns his own security company, Foundation Securitydescribed as a mini Secret Service, run in part by a former Army special forces weapons sergeant. While some companies have boosted spending, others have scaled back, perhaps due to one-time expenses in previous years. Heres what other corporations reported: Nvidia: $3.5 million to protect CEO Jensen Huang, up from $2.2 million in 2023 Apple: $1.4 million for Tim Cook, down from $2.4 million in 2023 Amazon: $1.1 million for CEO Andy Jassy, and $1.6 million for Jeff Bezos, an amount consistent for at least 15 years Palo Alto Networks: $1.6 million for CEO Nikesh Arora, down from $3.5 million in 2023 JPMorgan: $882,000 for CEO Jamie Dimon, up slightly from $866,000 in 2023 Some companies declined to break out their security costs but offered hints. Fox, for example, said it was spending more to protect CEO Lachlan Murdoch as partisanship grows. Lockheed Martin now requires its CEO to fly exclusively on private corporate jets. And Alex Karp, CEO of AI and military intelligence company Palantir, always travels with at least four bodyguards. For some executives, the threat is very real, and not always tied to corporate activities. Musk, for example, told shareholders last year: “We actually did have two homicidal maniacs in the last roughly seven months come to aspirationally try to kill me.” The number of businesses protecting their CEOs continues to rise. Intelligence firm Equilar found that 34.4% of companies in the S&P 500 offered executive security last year, compared to just 28.2% in 2023. Median spending rose 6% overall, with an average of $105,749.
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E-Commerce
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