How the Housing Sector Has Been Impacted by the Economic Slowdown

In this episode, Terry Hagerty, co-head of homebuilding & building products investment banking for Goldman Sachs, discusses how COVID-19 has impacted the outlook for housing and the broader building products sector. Despite the severity of the current slowdown, Hagerty points to favorable demographic tailwinds as reasons to expect a return to industry growth into 2021. Additionally, Hagerty explains why the sector may be poised to rebound more quickly from this crisis than that of 2008, driven by more favorable supply/demand dynamics, consumers’ relatively strong financial position, and healthy corporate balance sheets. “When I look at the balance sheets and liquidity positions of my clients, both in home building and building products, it’s quite strong,” Hagerty says. “Most of them have access to the capital markets, given some of the Fed action that we’ve seen, and generally they’re all positioned to weather what could potentially be a very extended downturn. So the outlook today is much different than 2008.”