Americas Building - Homebuilders: A Heat Map for Housing: Deceleration in May Permits Consistent with Broader Builder Strategies

Research evidence excerpt

Americas Building - Homebuilders: A Heat Map for Housing: Deceleration in May Permits Consistent with Broader Builder Strategies

Equity Research

25 June 2026 | 4:00PM EDT

Americas Building - Homebuilders: A Heat Map for Housing:

Deceleration in May Permits Consistent with Broader Builder Strategies

Moderation in Permits Aligns with Buyer Profile and Operational Shift: On a Susan Maklari

+1(212)357-3906 |

trailing 12-month basis, single-family permits contracted 8% in May, similar to April susan.maklari@gs.com

Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC

and versus a 2% decline in May 2025. This comes as historically low build times are

Charles Perron-Piche, CFA

giving builders greater flexibility to moderate production and maintain inventories +1(917)343-1847 | charles.perron-

following a weak selling season. We are also continuing to see the shift towards piche@gs.comGoldman Sachs & Co. LLC

build-to-order sales at select price points, which aligns with the strength in Rhea Bhatia

higher-end consumers. As backlogs revert to growth, we look for gross margins to +1(332)245-7517Goldman Sachs India| rhea.bhatia@gs.comSPL

benefit from the mix shift while also providing greater visibility to future revenues Galilee Best

amidst the ongoing macro uncertainty. More broadly, we believe the pullback in +1(212)902-7208 | galilee.best@gs.com Goldman Sachs & Co. LLC

permits points to a larger alignment of supply vs demand, allowing builders across

price points to incrementally ease incentives and to begin restoring profitability as

we move into the second half of the year. Against this, we believe DHI remains

among the best positioned given the geographic mix and focus on capital allocation.

We also highlight Buy-rated MTH as the company executes on a growth focused