Housing Starts and Fits
Single family housing starts scratched out a 2,000-home improvement in March from January’s adjusted record low of 356,000.
Here’s Calculated Risk’s picture of the current total starts and one-family data.
Click image for access to Calculated Risk's "Housing Starts: Near Record Low" post.
Calculated Risk’s take-away comment:
Total starts and single family starts declined in March (compared to February), and are both just above the record low set in January. This is the second month in a row with starts slightly above the record low – this is just a slight increase in total starts and single family starts are essentially flat with the record low.
It is still too early to call the bottom in January, however I do expect housing starts to bottom sometime in 2009.
Starts data reflects the mayhem in the credit markets dating back to late September ‘08, which shut down construction and project lending, and seized up residential construction mid-hammer blow.
- The Wall Street Journal report on housing starts.
- The WSJ’s panel of economists debate “the bottom.”
- The Census Bureau’s release on Starts, Permits, and Completions.
- The New York Times reports on surging foreclosures and plunging starts.
It’s made it a toughest-ever winter for home builders of all sizes and stripes.
Builders say they’re reduced to two positions: Cash and fetal.
Weekends they like to work, but with no one coming through the model homes over the weekends, a good number of them have nothing better to do than to sit on the couch, remote in hand. After the drama at Augusta this past weekend, one home building executive writes:
I watched the final holes of the Masters but my sports highlight this weekend was the final game of the Frozen Four NCAA Hockey Championship from the Verizon Center on Saturday night. Boston University beat Miami of Ohio in overtime after scoring 2 goals in the final minute of the game to tie the score.The game and result was further proof that nothing good is happening in Ohio and that some cosmic power is either staring down with the stink eye or sticking needles in a voodoo dollish map of the United States.
Comments
One Response to “Housing Starts and Fits”
Leave a Reply
the unemployment rate today is a bit higher because of the recession but hopefully the economy would recover soon.-:’