AHBA Hosts Annual Economic Summit

(Anchorage) The Anchorage Home Builders Association hosted its annual homebuilding and economic forecasting event on Wednesday, Oct. 30, 2024. Economic Summit “Building a Brighter Future” is an opportunity for Alaskans to listen to local and national experts give a comprehensive overview of the housing sector at local, statewide and national levels.

This year’s panelists included Danushka Nanayakkara, assistant vice president of forecasting and analysis for the National Association of Home Builders; Suzanne LaFrance, mayor of Anchorage; Connie Yoshimura, broker of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices; Tyler Robinson, vice president of community development, real estate and planning at Cook Inlet Housing Authority; and Steve Larson, executive director of mortgage and real estate lending at Global Credit Union and president of Global Credit Union Home Loans.

Mayor LaFrance voiced her commitment to bringing new housing to Anchorage. “Our code is full of well-intentioned ideas about what we want development in the municipality to be like, but the cumulative effect is that it’s now incredibly difficult to build housing in Anchorage,” LaFrance said. “We have to get clear as a community about what our priorities are. If our standards generally prevent us from building housing, they’re not serving us.”

AHBA hosts the annual economic summit in order bring important housing data and economic information to Alaskans who can use this data to make informed decisions. Over the past few years, Alaska and the rest of the country saw major shifts across the housing sector. In 2020 and 2021, mortgage interest rates reached record lows. However, that coincided with some dramatic housing price increases. Mortgage rates quickly followed and increased in 2023 and 2024.

“In Anchorage the median new home price is $683,134, at current interest rates the income needed to qualify for that home purchase is $217,651. For every $1,000 increase in the cost of a home 110 people are priced out of that purchase,” Nanayakkara said, in demonstrating how thin the margin is in affordability in our community.

With regulatory costs driving 23.8% of the price of a new home, the municipal codes can make a significant impact on the affordability of homes in Anchorage. “The municipality recently adopted a rule requiring laminated beams, a step beyond the international building code. The argument was that this is just a $1,000 increase to the cost of a home. When you are thinking of real people, that is 110 families that can no longer afford that home. In a community our size that is substantial and can’t be ignored,” said Andre Spinelli, president of AHBA.