The Housing Market Is Broken. I Want These 2 Stocks Before It Turns

Housing is the most hated industry in America right now. I own QXO ( QXO ), so I have skin in this game. The housing statement is very subjective. But if you know an area that is more hated, please let me know. I even think that housing is more hated than software. My complaint is about single-family construction specifically. June single-family starts came in at 895,000, the third consecutive monthly decline. Single-family permits fell 2.4% to 871,000, and permits lead starts. The headline number looked strong at 1.427 million, up 19% on the month, but almost all of that was multifamily, which jumped 76% to 513,000. New home sales say the same thing. June printed 628,000, down 5.6% from a year ago, with 9.3 months of supply sitting on builder balance sheets. Anything above six months means a builder with a problem. Now put that against population. The U.S. has added roughly 14 million people since 2019, and single-family starts are running at about the same absolute rate they were then. Per capita, the U.S. is building less housing than it did before the pandemic, and they were already underbuilding back then. Fifteen years of that compounds into a shortfall measured in millions of units. The resale market is a different picture, and going back through the data changed how I frame this. June existing home sales fell 2.4% on the month and rose 2.8% from a year ago. The median price hit an all-time high of $440,600. The affordability index improved to 102.3 from 95.5, because wage growth is finally outrunning home price growth. The 30-year fixed averaged 6.49% in June against 6.82% a year ago. So, resale volume grinds sideways at a depressed level while prices set records. The real damage is concentrated in the financed, discretionary layer above it. New construction. Remodels. Big-ticket backyard spending. New in-ground pool builds are running near 58,000 units against a peak closer to 100,000. That distinction is the whole thesis. Household formation is intact. The deficit is intact. Financing costs are what broke, and financing costs mean-revert. These are the developments that get me excited, especially in this environment. The question I care about is how to own that recovery without owning the timing risk. I want to look at two companies that answer it from opposite directions. Millrose Properties ( MRP ) gets paid contractually while you wait. Pool Corporation ( POOL ) gets paid by an installed base while you wait. Neither one needs the recovery to justify owning it today. Both get a lot better if it shows up. And if you know me, you know that this is the kind of risk/reward I want at this point in the housing cycle. Also, as I know the reader base is diverse, I made sure that one is for income investors. One is for compounders. Now, let's get to it!