In an interview with Crain’s Detroit Business about the generational turnover in the homebuilding industry, Sable Homes President John Bitely predicts that the big players in the field will only get bigger.

More than half of Michigan’s licensed homebuilders is owned by someone 56 or older, nearing retirement age — and for every four who exit the industry, only one is coming in to replace them, Crain’s reported.

The looming generational turnover comes as Michigan already confronts a housing shortage driven by aging stock, owners reluctant to move due to locked-in low mortgage rates, regulatory hurdles, and sluggish population growth.

Given all of those factors, industry experts believe the biggest players in the home construction space are well positioned to continue eating up market share.

As Bitely’s career has spanned 40 years and several market cycles, it’s Michigan’s so-called lost decade in the early and mid-2000s that he believes has put the state in its current position.

Construction plummeted during that period while the state was in a years-long recession and young people stopped joining the industry.

“Now, 20 years later, the people that would have started (in the construction trades) would be moving into management or ownership,” Bitely told Crain’s Detroit Business. “And they don’t exist.”

Bitely’s situation, as he starts thinking about retirement, is better than many homebuilders, he said.

His son, Andrew, went to school for engineering and worked in that industry for a time, but has since joined Sable Homes and is primed to take over in the coming years, he said. His daughter, Karin Kay, is the company’s sales manager.

While Sable Homes’ future may be on solid ground, other aging builders are likely exploring succession options, and for many that probably means selling to a bigger player.

“My prediction is us bigger builders will be bigger,” Bitely said of the future landscape of the homebuilding industry in Michigan and beyond.

In many ways, that’s already playing out, according to Crain’s.

The National Association of Home Builders reported at the end of July that the number of homebuilders reporting that they have been approached about potential acquisitions has leaped in less than a year, according to recent results from the NAHB/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index survey.

That survey found that in August 2025 around 14% of respondents said they were seeing more mergers and acquisitions activity in their local markets. That number increased 7 percentage points by June of this year.

Michigan’s issue of an aging population in homebuilding and other sectors, coupled with stagnant population, is increasingly an area of concern for policymakers.

It’s an issue that’s top of mind for the homebuilding industry as more builders are needed to keep the state economically viable and on a growth trajectory, according to Dawn Crandall, executive vice president for government relations with the Home Builders Association of Michigan.

“We have an aging population and a declining population,” Crandall said. “That’s only going to continue if we don’t do anything to bring or keep younger people in our state.”

A majority of the state’s licensed builders are owned by those aged 56 years or older, according to data provided by HBAM. That’s roughly in line with the national figure, according to data from the National Association of Home Builders, which put the median age at 57 as of late 2023. In Michigan, for every four homebuilders exiting the workforce, there’s only one coming in, Crandall said.

Home builders and industry experts in West Michigan and beyond continue to attract new, younger people into the sector, something that’s been playing out for years.

Read the full Crain’s Detroit Business story, here.