What D.R. Horton’s strategy reveals now about new-home demand

Everybody’s got an opinion on why housing “sucks” right now. Mortgage rates are too high. Construction costs are out of control. Regulations are choking supply. And the loudest refrain of all: “It’s the rates. Rates killed housing.”

That story makes for a clean headline, but it doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.

If rates alone were the problem, America’s largest…