builder confidence it ticks up to 35, but that is, you know, still historically weak of course. Why is it still weak, Jim? What are the reasons?

Here we are mired in the dog days of summer. You know, August uh seems a little bit weaker than July in particular. we're we're just continue to see geopolitical issues, uh the macroeconomy continue to weigh on potential buyers out there and people are just postponing uh any kind of large large uh purchase of of anything, particularly homes at the moment right now. In fact, you know, our survey shows that, you know, traffic is almost non-existent. It's just uh you know, it's a tough time of year. anybody who was going to move because their kids are moving to a new school district, uh they're probably already have done so and if they they've passed on the opportunity, they're done for the summer. We're we're just at the end of the the the buying season now and uh and and our members continue to see uh pessimism on the on the short-term horizon.

Uh it at 35% it looks like of buyers, it looks like they're cutting prices, you know, two-thirds are using incentives. What what has that meant for their margins, Jim? What are your members telling you?

Well, interestingly, the smaller builders are are actually the more optimistic of uh of of the group during our surveys. It's it's the larger builders who are building, you know, you know, more than 100, certainly over 200 homes. They're the ones that are really throwing those incentives out there. Those are putting uh further price pressures and margin pressures on some of the smaller builders out there. But in order to move product, especially in those larger markets in the Southeast uh and the Southwest where we're starting to see uh that over that over inventory, uh that's where those incentives are being used the most. But uh they're squeezing margins in order to try to get product moved so they can start the next the next projects.

Jim, the 30-year fix is sitting near at 673 per mortgage news daily. Where do your economists see that headed near to intermediate term? What what's their latest forecast?

we're going to hover right about where we are now. I I feel like, you know, watching the 10-year Treasury in particular, that's kind of uh it's kind of held steady for the last couple of weeks. I I think we hold here for a little while. what we really need to see uh a move south uh very quickly. We need to get back down to six. if we're going to see anything in the market start to move. If not, we're going to see a a fall season uh be as as slow and unfortunate uh as the as the spring and summer seasons.