EDITOR:

The article that I am responding to you about is the flat market predicted for new single family home permits. This article has many good points and lots of information about how the housing market has decreased over the past couple of years. By this coming year they are expecting the housing market to decrease by 2.5% which is 13,964 permits issued. The Home Builders Association of Michigan (HBAM) stated that with higher interest rates and the delay of utility hookups are becoming an increasing problem.

In my opinion I agree with the writer that there is a problem with people who are looking to build a home. The article says that the big problem is utility hook ups, they said that production numbers would be higher if it was not for this one problem. Now this is not only a problem for them but for current homeowners having trouble finding someone to do the job or even doing the job properly. For this reason utility hook ups are delayed by days or even longer putting workers behind schedule costing them more and more money which raises the price of the home construction. Although the hookups are not the only ones to blame, the other problem is getting the product. As I further researched this topic I found a survey that was done by 13 WZZM in the beginning of 2022 and it reported that some people were waiting over a year for the product or to renovate their homes. In 2018 the wait was only three months. Because of all these problems it has made it harder for new homeowners to get a home and causing permit rates to go down by 1.6% in this new year.

To solve this problem I feel that the following resolution is one of many ways to solve this ever increasing problem. We need more people in the workforce as many of us know. As more and more people are retiring this is leaving openings for jobs for the new generation. This is a problem in itself because people are less interested in these professions making the utility hook ups a high demand. Some of these professions consist of plumbers, electricians, and contractors. This high demand opens up an opportunity for bad contractors to enter in, causing the homeowner more money to invest into an already difficult situation. To summarize this we need to invest in my generation and create an interest in these fields and hopefully we can see the demand for home permits to go up.

Isabelle Green

Rapid River