Embrace the Housing Cycle
20 Questions for Public and Private Home Builders Just Before We Turn the Corner.
- If you’ve “caught the falling knife,” is it appropriate not to look down at your hands for a while?
- Now that you’re re-loading your lot supply, have you checked to see whether the muzzle is pointing at you or not.
- Is one red cent the new dime?
- Does raw land violate any religious or cultural practices?
- Is it ethical to strategically walk away from a mortgage that’s recently been modified to reduce principal?
- Will the banks that are demand builders to use their NOL refunds to pay up on AC&D loans, give their own NOL refunds back to the companies and stakeholders they owe, or will they use the refunds to shore up their liquidity?
- By the end of this cycle, will the term “new record low” be ready for retirement?
- Once punch-bowl economics goes away, can we expect more media stories on “the demise of the American Dream of homeownership?”
- Will not seeing one’s 401(k) plan deflate by 40% be the new 1,200 sq. ft. of living space?
- Will buyers of FDIC distressed asset portfolios wind up rehabbing and reselling properties they sold earlier to buyers who didn’t originally have the means to pay for them?
- Will home building companies—public and private—consider cutting the Administrative out of SG&A as a 2010/11 cost action?
- Will we make our children and grandchildren pay for our having lived for two decades well beyond our means?
- In your own words, what makes the “special services” group at your commercial lender so special?
- How patient is patient money?
- What is Big Builder supposed to call a NewCo after a year or more of existence, a NotsoNewCo?
- When you go asset light, can you go shopping for new sizes at the outlets?
- Will The Governator create a California mortgage modification program called Helping Everybody Manage Payments, or HEMP?
- How are we supposed to know when we’ve turned THE corner? How many corners are there?
- How do we get unimproved lots in on the “constant improvement” movement?
- Is real estate real in name only?
March 25, 2010 | Filed Under Financial Crisis, Home Builders
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One Response to “Embrace the Housing Cycle”
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Nice writing, and good ideas too. You ought to check out the US Census projections for the US to 2050. Pew Foundation has a report too. Fabulous growth, no depedency ratio stall out. We are Brazil or Indonesia if we can learn how to adjust all price and delivery systems to match what, 1/3 lower incomes? A hundred years ago, Americans thought wealth formation and modest spending habits were just peachy. We should all do away with federal tax subidies to housing of all sorts, and figure out what works. Pete Fugiel