Housing Crisis’s Mainstream Media Lead of the Day
For all the [deserved] grief journalists on the business/real estate beat are getting for not “getting” how to read the monthly and seasonal data correctly, there has to be some consolation.
We’ve joked over the years about hiring many reporters who “couldn’t do the math” but know how to report and write.
Well, this lead-in to an article in the Fort Meyers, Fla. News Press suggests that what they lack in data analysis skills sometimes is offset by really clever writing. We’ll take note of this sort of thing; and if an analyst/blogger writes something clever as well, it will qualify. Calculated Risk made note of this call-out.
Victor Vangelakos lives in a luxury condominium tower on the Caloosahatchee River. He never has to worry about the neighbors making too much noise.
There are no neighbors.
The Time Calls for More Focus at Home Builders’ Trade Group
A document dated June 22, 2009 from National Association of Home Builders vice chairman Bob Jones to the trade group’s executive board outlines six broad issue areas.
- Builder Liability (including the Chinese drywall issue)
- Construction codes and standards (including green building)
- Environment (the climate cap & trade issues)
- Federal tax and trade policy
- Housing finance
- Labor/Safety & Health
Around page 80 of the 95 pages of the memorandum comes a series of Amicus briefs that state the association’s position in litigation for everything ranging from “takings,” to endangered species, to fair housing, to effluent limitation guidelines.
Which is to say that housing’s worst stretch since the Great Depression hasn’t slowed down the onslaught of advocacy issues, battles, and policy challenges the NAHB and many of its trade association peers have had to deal with these days.
As a dramatic overhaul of the nation’s health care complex begins to reel under its own weight even as President Barack Obama pushes to bring a revolutionary new plan home, Obama has begun to have to reckon with America’s capacity to adapt in so many ways at once.
Were the economy not so afflicted, focus on the health care system, energy sourcing and economics, regulation of finance, and rebuilding the country’s infrastructure could get a fair shake. Despite high levels of urgency around each of these issues and challenges, neither exected representatives, agency officials, nor the public at large have the capacity to reinvent everything about everything.
Maybe each of these matters is a high priority. But, for the moment, we’re dealing emergently with events and consequences that put us in triage mode, which trumps or at least disrupts prioritization.
We believe the same goes with the NAHB. The question is how many of the initiatives and endeavors the trade group is allocating its resources to will wind up being academic if the vicious circle of home price deflation, foreclosures, bank losses, profitability declines, job losses, and more foreclosures keeps up at a significant pace?
How many home builders will there be to represent in Washington, D.C., if the focus here doesn’t lead somehow to a stabilization of the value of what consumers pay their life’s earnings to come by. Even as more and more sound and disciplined economic analysis posits that at least a few of housing’s multiple bottoms are coming into plump view.
Here’s Tim Iocono’s well-argued and well-illustrated case for green shoots mixed with grains of salt.
Even Bill at Calculated Risk–who holds that we haven’t seen nearly the end on home price declines–has had positive observations creep into his analysis over the past several months.
As policy and free enterprise do their double-helix thing in the next six to 24 months, the NAHB’s mission walks an increasingly delicate line. Look at one of the lines in Iacono’s piece:
Don’t feel too sorry for the homebuilders – they had a few very good years.
This is a widely held view.
Home builders’ representation of their industry’s interests on Capitol Hill need to drive for what will structurally help economic recovery: jobs, jobs, jobs. At this point, reality looks as if the government and free enterprise are forced bedfellows and they’re going to have to get used to it fast if they want to ward off years of less than anemic economic activity.
We understand that–like home building and home builders–the association is facing one of its biggest survival challenges ever.
Some of the executive committee members Jones’ memo addresses believe that that the seriousness of the challenges call for measures more drastic than prioritization.
Very likely, by the trade group’s Fall Board meeting in Chicago, a dramatic restructuring of the NAHB may surface. Just as some of the big home builders have had to relook at how they rationalize operations in markets–and in many cases, have chosen to exit some–the NAHB may have to look at all of its resource allocation with a sharp eye toward making the best with less.
Advocacy is the what home builders need most. That’s where the group should hunker down and do what it does best.
Florida Home Sales Show a Pulse
Buck Horne, vp for equity research covering home building at Raymond James & Associates writes this:
Florida existing home sales increased 28% y/y in June, accelerating sharply relative to May’s 16% y/y increase and an 18% rise in April. Across the state, June single-family existing home sales totaled 15,820 units, up from 12,333 units a year earlier. On a weighted average basis, sales in South Florida increased 70% y/y, driven by sales in Fort Myers-Cape Coral (+137%), Miami (+54%) and Ft. Lauderdale (+35%). Central Florida sales also improved 24% y/y on a weighted average basis, driven by sales in Orlando (+38%) and foreclosure ridden Fort Pierce-Port St. Lucie (+27%). North Florida sales also notably turned positive, rising 10% y/y after falling 2% in May and 6% in April.
Been down so long….
A Dose of Realty
If you’re like us, you could spit your coffee watching this one. Hat tip The Big Picture.
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