Bulletin Board Magazine 2021 Volume 2

XPrXeXsidXeXnt’s Message

PRESIDENT'S MESSAGE by Christopher Amato - SBACNJ

Christopher Amato President - SBACNJ

Association Relationships Make #BringingPeopleHomes Possible

Secretary Gina Raimondo that our industry has the Biden Administration’s full support in resolving the lumber issue. As with other challenges in our past, we will continue to navigate through these issues and will remain strong as an industry by supporting one another. Supporting one another is all about relationships. By having strong relationships with our associate members, suppliers, and other builders in the industry many of us have been successful at the strategic planning that needs to take place currently to bring homes to closing. This is something we at SBACNJ have known since our inception more than 50 years ago. For instance, my relationship with my appliance supplier is helping with the ordering & scheduling process for projects my company has under construction. I’m sure every one of you have similar connections with suppliers that have been detrimental to your building process at this time. The depth of the relationships we continue to build at SBACNJ makes it manageable to build even during the most challenging of times. While I’m excited that buyers are still buying homes, and builders are still building homes, we are looking forward to when there is relief provided to our industry in the form of more material availability, the labor shortage

resolves, and the cost of lumber is addressed. Even so, it’s an exciting time to build because it’s been a long time since we as builders have had a certain level of confidence with the construction projects scheduled through next year. With the unprecedented demand for housing, communities are happy to see builders come into places to build homes. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen that and we are definitely #BringingPeopleHomes. We’ve also not seen a resale market this strong in decades. Bidding wars leading to higher prices, and less mortgage contingent deals have aided this side of the industry, allowing move-up buyers to purchase new construction leading to the demand. Since last year’s mostly digital forum for all things it’s time to look forward to some in-person events now. It’s been a long time coming, but I’m so looking forward to seeing everyone in person at some of our upcoming events this summer. FAME was a fabulous in-person event in May, and it couldn’t have been better! Congratulations to all the FAME Winners and thank you to all our amazing sponsors who supported this program. It was a great way to break the ice on in-person events. Our Annual Golf Outing that was held on June 21st was even better this year because John Cummins brought us even better weather

As we head into summer and the pandemic is for the most part, in our rear view mirrors, our industry has entered some unchartered waters. We’ve been using the hashtag on social media #BringingPeopleHomes, which is NJBA’s nod to our mission for our industry: to provide housing to the residents of New Jersey. While sales and homebuyer activity remain at unprecedented levels, we have, and continue to experience several challenges that are different than those we have faced in years passed. We all know that finding tradespeople for the massive amount of work we have is one of the greatest difficulties we are facing, in addition to the cost and availability of materials, particularly lumber. This is causing serious conflicts, even within our own companies because trying to schedule trades which are scarce, and longer- lead times for materials makes navigating the murky waters of purchasing and production a bit tricky. As a result of these materials issues, there is a tremendous amount of legislative pressure that has been put on the lumber market and NAHB, as well as NJBA are doing a great job trying to address this. No one knows how long this will remain an issue; however, just recently NAHB received assurances from Commerce

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