Homebuilder Sentiment Dashboard: Quarter-Over-Quarter Insights

In Q4 of 2024 Principia launched our first Homebuilder Sentiment Dashboard. Principia’s sentiment dashboard series is intended to track the perceptions of key purchase decision makers throughout the building products value chain.  Comparison of homebuilder sentiment results from Q4 2024 to Q1 2025 on lead times, price increases and product substitutions, generally reveal short term improvement.

Lead times from our distributors and/or product suppliers are improving.
This sentiment has seen encouraging progression with more homebuilders experiencing a decline in lead times from their distributors and product suppliers in early 2025. Decreasing lead times was corroborated by our Lumberyard sentiment dashboard shared last week.

We substitute our preferred brands or materials for alternatives more often than we did 12 months ago.
This sentiment has remained the most consistent over the tracking period. More than 80% of homebuilders indicate they have increased substitutions of their preferred brands or materials with alternatives.

Price increases of building materials are negatively impacting our business.
The final metric examined is the opinion surrounding price increases. The number of homebuilders reporting an adverse impact of price increases has declined considerably from Q4 2024 to Q1 2025. Principia will continue to monitor the perceived effects of price increases going forward.