Need extra housing market tales from Lance Lambert’s ResiClub in your inbox? Subscribe to the ResiClub newsletter.
KB House announced on Thursday that it’ll relocate its company headquarters from Los Angeles to Tempe, Arizona, starting in spring 2027. The builder, which has a $3 billion market capitalization, mentioned the brand new headquarters within the Phoenix metro space will carry govt management and key company capabilities right into a extra centralized, lower-cost working surroundings.
Whereas the enormous homebuilder—ranked No. 526 on the Fortune 1000—emphasised that it’ll preserve a major presence in California (particularly in San Bernardino County, CA)—a state the place it at the moment operates six divisions and greater than 100 lively communities—the transfer displays a broader shift in the place giant homebuilders are more and more doing enterprise.
On one hand, the cost-saving transfer displays how homebuilders are tightening operations after a number of years of margin compression throughout this softer post-boom interval. Then again, it underscores how the geographic heart of U.S. homebuilding has shifted over the previous decade—and the place it could proceed to shift within the years forward.
KB House’s personal building footprint illustrates the development. Again in 2012, KB House constructed practically 4 occasions as many houses in Los Angeles County because it did in Maricopa County, Arizona. At present, that dynamic has flipped dramatically: KB House’s annual dwelling closings in Maricopa County at the moment are practically eight occasions larger than its closings in Los Angeles County, in accordance with information pulled from the ResiClub Terminal.
“This transfer brings our groups collectively in a extra collaborative surroundings, and Phoenix is the suitable place to do it . . . It positions KB House to function extra successfully and helps the subsequent section of our progress,” wrote Robert McGibney, CEO of KB House, in a press release published on Thursday.
KB House’s regular shift in manufacturing from a market like L.A. to Phoenix additionally displays the broader migration of homebuilding exercise towards excessive inhabitants progress areas in Arizona, Alabama, Florida, Idaho, Texas, South Carolina, North Carolina, Utah, and Tennessee. Metro areas like Phoenix have seen stronger inhabitants progress, extra accessible land, and fewer regulatory constraints in comparison with coastal California markets the place land prices, allowing timelines, and growth rules are sometimes way more restrictive. For nationwide homebuilders, these structural variations more and more affect the place capital will get deployed.
To see the place America’s core homebuilding markets are concentrated, have a look at the ResiClub map under.
Whenever you have a look at the map above, you would possibly discover the similarity it has with the map we share steadily displaying how lively stock throughout the nation compares to pre-pandemic 2019 ranges.
In ResiClub’s view, throughout this post-Pandemic Housing Growth interval—the place there’s some downward strain on dwelling costs—markets with an abundance of recent dwelling provide have skilled further softening pressures. After they have the margins to take action, builders are sometimes keen to supply bigger affordability incentives (typically even reducing web efficient costs) to keep up gross sales in a shifted market.
That’s precisely what we’ve seen in lots of pockets of the nation throughout this era, and when it occurs, it places further cooling strain on the resale market. Some patrons who would have beforehand thought of present houses at the moment are choosing new houses with extra favorable offers, including additional upward strain on resale stock.
That alone doesn’t totally clarify the present housing market bifurcation, however it’s a bit of the puzzle. According to ResiClub statistical analysis in July 2025, there’s a modest or average correlation (R² = 0.31) between current single-family allowing ranges and lively stock climbing above pre-pandemic 2019 ranges.
