The folks who build homes are feeling good.

From Marketplace, I'm Sabrie Benashore in for David Brancaccio.

Happy President's Day. Home builders were more confident in January

than they were in December, according to a recent

survey from the National Association of Home Builders. The growing confidence is

mostly, they say, because there's a lot of demand for housing and mortgage rates

are lower than they were late last year.

That said, the survey found that construction companies are still having a hard time securing

the building materials they need.

Marketplace's Justin Ho has more.

It's been especially hard to find sophisticated equipment lately, says John Kirk, the founder of

the Light Path Company, a multifamily developer based in New Bromfills, Texas.

That includes Transformers, Circuit Breakers, Electric Meters.

Anything that has a chip in it, your H-KC equipment, the air handlers, compressors.

Kirk says there's high demand for that kind of equipment.

That's because a lot of construction projects kicked off a few years ago,

and more recently they're moving out of the planning and design phase.

Once you start construction, you start buying out the materials and assembling and building the project.

Other more basic materials are getting easier to find and cheaper.

That includes lumber and cheaper.

That includes lumber and steel.

But Susan Wachter, a real estate professor at the Wharton School,

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