House Hunters Are Leaving the City, and Builders Can’t Keep Up

LATHROP, Calif. — They had a down payment. They were prequalified for a mortgage. They were willing to move almost an hour’s drive eastward. But the number that really mattered was “32.”

If a saleswoman standing in a model unit plucked a bingo ball with that number from one of several buckets arrayed on a marble kitchen island, Jezreleen and Eric Namayan would get to pay $662,000 for a five-bedroom home in River Islands, a master planned community built around 13 man-made lakes in California’s Central Valley. If not, the home would go to one of the dozens of other prospective buyers who had lined up next to them on a Zoom webcast of the drawing. The Namayans would remain in a two-bedroom condominium with two teenagers while struggling to penetrate the white hot post-pandemic housing market.

“When they started getting closer to our lot, I almost felt like I was outside looking at myself,” Mrs. Namayan said.

Tired of being cooped up, eager to take advantage of low interest rates and increasingly willing to move two or more hours from the urban core, buyers have propelled new home construction to its highest level since 2006. That was the year when the mid-2000s housing bubble started deflating on its way to what would become the financial crisis and Great Recession.

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