is joined by various guests to discuss the state of the housing market, the ongoing spending pressures faced by consumers, food inflation, and more.despite rising housing costs. Abbe Will, Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies' Senior Research Associate and Associate Director of Remodeling Futures, also joins to explaina report that revealed Macy's credit card holders are increasingly becoming delinquentFinally, the show shifts focus to the impact of food inflation.
So we do see that this softening in spending and home improvement and repair spending is partly driven by the ongoing weakness in the housing market, right?And it is the the weakness in existing home sales that is, is really a big factor in our our forecast for softer spending this year.You know, folks might, might do some work in advance of putting their home on the market.
Yeah, I mean, and Diy, you know, I think a lot of projects that are done diy often are more in the discretionary realm. And the two and the second reason like you said, the weak supply in the resale market is really helping that story come to life.And so builders are offering those incentives the mortgage rate by that buy downs excuse me, when the builder upfronts the costs to lower the rate on the loan that is really attractive and also the sales price in the new home market also seems a little more attractive.
And this is also consistent with the data that we are seeing even outside of earnings when you take a look at the recent numbers that we're getting here from the New York Fed. And that's also reflected I think and so many of these stock prices here because you and I have been talking to strategist after strategist who has said the consumer consumer discretionary sector has been under pressure.A lot of those bigger names will likely remain under pressure as they try to navigate what this new normal is going to look like here for these retailers, at least over the next couple of quarters.
But again, at least the sentiment is we will likely hear similar commentary to what we heard from Walmart. A lot of what we're seeing with names like Nike under armor Lululemon is it it's really already priced in, right? We, we just had a company in Under Armor put out their fourth quarter and in full year results here for a fiscal 20 four.
It's a little bit of a gamble, right, in terms of its valuations are low, but they're low for a reason.There's, there's a lot of, of course litigation that is always taking place with these companies, um whether it's Nike and New Balance or whether it's Adidas and um and Lululemon, I mean, it, it seems like there, there's always something that gets kind of lobbed at the other enemy territory, time and time again here.