You have probably noticed in the last couple of months that some of the strong housing recovery news headlines have tamed. Some of the price hikes, existing home sales, permits reports, pending contracts, and other key housing metrics have simply stopped rising endlessly into more reasonable numbers. We keep hearing about how the housing market is going to continue to gain and how good this will be for the economy ahead. The problem is that at a time when mixed numbers have been coming out on the sector, we have noticed that the homebuilder stocks have been absolutely crushed.

24/7 Wall St. has not been able to avoid noticing that many of the key homebuilder stocks are now down for 2013 or they are barely up. Most have been crushed against their 52-week highs. This pertains to DR Horton Inc. (NYSE: DHI), KB Home (NYSE: KBH), Lennar Corp. (NYSE: LEN), PulteGroup, Inc. (NYSE: PHM), and Toll Brothers Inc. (TOL).

We have seen a lot of supporting data as to why the excitement is over. For starters, construction spending for June did manage to come in slightly lower. You had to be silly to not notice that long-term interest rates, and therefore mortgage rates, rose 1 full point from the start of May until the peak in summer. Refinancings have continued to slide as well, implying that the waves and waves and new homeowners either have under-market mortgage rates now or that they cannot afford the extra cash to refinance. The Case-Shiller data showed a sharp price rise in May before rates full ticked up, but then the pending home sales data slipped for June. The good news was that new home sales did rise sharply in June.

Even toward the end of July we noted that The Home Depot Inc. (NYSE: HD) and Lowe’s Companies Inc. (NYSE: LOW) may be hit by real estate trends. New home sales in May reached a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 476,000, still only about a third of the annual rate at the peak of the housing boom in 2005. As homebuilders get rolling again, demand for new homes could displace sales of existing homes. Inventory reached a 12-year low of 1.85 million homes for sale in January and has been climbing out of that hole for the past few months as the home-buying season got into full swing. Part of the reason for the improvement is the lack of new homes for sale.

We wanted to see what lies ahead for the homebuilders by seeing how poorly many of these have performed in 2013. Some are up, but most are down handily from their 52-week highs. We have included their analyst consensus price targets from Thomson Reuters and even shown what sort of dividends they pay.

DR Horton Inc. (NYSE: DHI) was down almost 3% at $19.80 in late trading on Monday against a 52-week range of $17.17 to $27.75. Its stock is now effectively only flat for 2013. The consensus analyst target for DR Horton is almost $25, but its dividend is a meager 0.7%.

KB Home (NYSE: KBH) was down over 3% at $17.14 in late Monday trading against a 52-week range of $9.19 to $25.14, but its stock is still up about 9% so far in 2013. While it is up, that is down about 32% from its 52-week high. Analysts see KB Home trading up to $20.45 in the next year, but its dividend is a paltry 0.6%.

Lennar Corp. (NYSE: LEN) was down over 2% at $33.90 in late trading on Monday, making its loss so far in 2013 at 12%. With a 52-week range of $29.26 to $44.40, Lennar is down about 24% from its 52-week high. Lennar’s consensus price target is $41.15 and its dividend yield is barely worth mentioning at 0.5%.

PulteGroup, Inc. (NYSE: PHM) was down over 3% at $16.65 in late-Monday trading against a 52-week range of $11.30 to $24.47. Pulte’s stock is down about 8% so far in 2013, but that is actually down about 32% from its 52-week high. Analysts see Pulte rising to $20.35 and it pays a yield of about 1.2%.

Toll Brothers Inc. (NYSE: TOL) was down only about 1.6% at $32.98 in late afternoon trading on Monday,  giving it a gain of only 2% so far in 2013. Toll is holding up better than many builders as its stock is down by “only” about 16% from its 52-week high of $39.25. Analysts see Toll rising to just over $38, but it pays no dividend.

The good news for the retail play in housing is that Home Depot stock is down only about 3% from its 52-week high and is up almost 30% so far in 2013. Lowe’s just hit a 52-week of $45.47 on Monday and its stock is up 29% so far in 2013. Home Depot sports a 1.9% dividend yield versus about 1.6% for Lowe’s.

To prove just how much damage has been technically to this sector, the iShares Dow Jones US Home Construction (NYSEMKT: ITB) ETF is up only 5.5% for 2013 now after close to a 2% drop on Monday. At $22.30, its 52-week range is $16.39 to $26.21.

Maybe this is good news that the housing stocks have pulled back so much. After all, they rallied so much since the recession. We cannot help but notice that these stocks have such low dividends as well. If they are going to be valued as land banks, maybe they better start raising their dividends to compete with traditional banks.

Thank you for reading! Have some feedback for us?
Contact the 24/7 Wall St. editorial team.