Comments for "Housing Starts: Near Record Low"


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if the guy who runs NYSE cant figure out why the market is going up.. you need to worry...


And that is why housing prices will fall further.. as long as it cheaper to build new houses than sell older houses- inventory will never shrink below a certain level.

Evil


Oh dear. This is right up Jas's alley. He's going to have field day.

But hey, when you are right, you are right.


товарищи! доброе утро!


the excitement i hear from bulltards is that "the rate of decline is slowing...a LOT man!!! THAT is the reason the market is rallying! pretty soon it bottoms and we are setting up the recovery."
okay. personally, i don't know because I broke my crystal ball back in 1998. .


Bounce - good morning to you, too

Now, re jobless claims - the futures seem to shrug off the fact that last week was shorter than usual due to Easter/Passover. Plus previous numbers were adjusted up, as always. Duh
The 4-week average for new claims was 651K, consistent with expectations


OT; First graph from the story on Nokia's earning's on Yahoo Finance:

"Nokia Corp. on Thursday said profits plummeted 90 percent in the first quarter because of fading demand for mobile phones amid the worldwide downturn -- but its shares surged as analysts had expected an even gloomier report."

I've captiulated on trying to predict market movements. It's all priced in, right?


CR,
Dr. Charles Lieberman at Advisors Capital Management has a detailed discussion at:
http://www.advisorperspectives.com/commentaries/acm_031909.html
He generally agrees with your views of burning off overhang in 2009. I still think household size will grow faster (freeing up additional supply) than household formation and replacement will adsorb.


UE is a lagging indicator except when it comes in better than expected.


Starts > ZERO ='s too many.

Can I get a quant to check my math there?


We are below 1970 levels! And the population has increased -- doubled? -- since then.


Yes, everyone pointing to the slowing rate of decline. Just like terminal velocity when your chute doesn't open.


Engorged (member) wrote on Thu, 04/16/2009 - 8:37am.

Byz, less talking more sticking barrels in their nostrils.

Nothing meaningful is going to happen until the state collapses due to unfunded liabilities. Far too many people still identify with the people in charge for anything meaningful to happen in terms of reordering the political milieu. Just hold onto the right to keep the self-loading carbines and keep your powder dry, you'll have plenty of shooting to do without getting your ass beat by a hojillion cops. Don't even bother to get out of your chair til they start missing paychecks.

Once they can't afford to bribe the trustees in the open air concentration camp with being the last people in America to have a middle class existence, it's on like Donkey Kong, and that's not "what I think you should do" that's "what I think is the irreducible truth of the situation at that moment."

After that, once we get control of the machinery of a sovereign state, that's when policy toward the people who looted the state can get set and not just be grounds for imprisonment. I think we should let them make an assessed payment and run, and treat the rest like terrorists -- it'll keep our media department busy with positive stories of us freezing their funds and blowing up their beach houses with hyperbaric warheads during the reconstruction.


OT-
This is kind of krap that'll keep me from ever supporting liberal/democrats:

From: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iY4U7grAdfoZTwVsntWagL...
"Republicans on Wednesday said a Homeland Security Department intelligence assessment unfairly characterizes military veterans as right-wing extremists.
House Republican leader John Boehner described the report as offensive and called on the agency to apologize to veterans.
The agency's intelligence assessment, sent to law enforcement officials last week, warns that right-wing extremists could use the bad state of the U.S. economy and the election of the country's first black president to recruit members.
The assessment also said that returning military veterans who have difficulties assimilating back into their home communities could be susceptible to extremist recruiters or might engage in lone acts of violence."

So I'm a potential terrorist because I served in the military. Jeez. The DailyKOS has poluted the minds of America.


Engorged (member) wrote on Thu, 04/16/2009 - 8:37am...

LOL!


NEW POST at Calculated Risk.

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"

Engorged (member) wrote on Thu, 04/16/2009 - 8:37am...

LOL!
"

Better than Dixie Narmus. Agreed-


Angry Saver (from last):

"Anyone that relies on the MSM or Right Wing(nut) Radio for their information is clueless."

Absolutely, AngrySaver........THE DIFFERENCE is, they are now starting TO THINK and realize there IS a problem.......you can improve upon a diet only once the patient starts to eat.

- - - - -

Black Star Ranch


Cinco-X:
So I'm a potential terrorist because I served in the military. Jeez. The DailyKOS has poluted the minds of America.

Daily KOS? The hunt for the "lone wolf domestic terrorists" is not exactly exclusively a Democratic habit. Where were you when every liberal group in America was infiltrated by agents during the Bush admin and everyone who spoke out against the Iraq War was put in a database as a potential security threat? Where were you when having the name "Muhammed" became an excuse for a stop and search in every context? Now that the shoe's on the other foot it's a bad idea?

Gee I guess all those people who said, "don't give yourself powers you wouldn't enjoy if Hillary Clinton had them" maybe had a point. Wonder when I'm gonna hear a, "wow we were stupid to start playing the politics of criminalizing political opposition in earnest" out of the Right.

Oh right, never.


Just because yoj may be a moderate democrat, why do you assume that what you read in KOS is true or even believable?


Most enlightened liberals/progressive see Daily Kos for what it is... a bunch of overgrown teenage boys running a fantasy political rotisserie league.


Maybe we could give everyone leaving the military an orchidectomy.It is a simple and cheap procedure and would help with overpopulation as well as violence.Heck,give them a lobotomy and a 2 day pass to disneyland too ,no reason to not do things right or be stingy with our vets!

Tom Stone


Some facts we can't escape

There are 129 million housing units in the United States, approximately 31% of homeowners have no mortgage, houses are paid.

18.5 million are empty. This vacancy rate is 2.5 percentage points higher than it has been at any point in the half century the data have been tracked, translating into at least 3 million too many empty housing units in the country. This number, moreover, is rising, we cannot find a true bottom to home prices until this inventory of empty units starts to clear, and we cannot find a bottom to the mortgage finance market until home prices bottom out.

Each year roughly half a million homes are destroyed to make better use of the land on which they sit. Population growth also helps whittle down inventory.

The household formation years--ages 25 to 34--have 39.5 million people in them forming 19 million households, a group that creates demand for 1.8 to 1.9 million units each year. On the other hand, households pass from the scene later in life, and the homes they used to live in go onto the market.

There are 11.6 million households of 65- to 74-year-olds and 9 million households of 75- to 84-year-olds. Their departure increases supply by around 1.1 million units per year.

Demographic realities add about 850,000 units to demand.

Half-million homes are destroyed and removed from supply.

The basic arithmetic is:

If you build a million new homes,
tear down half a million,
and demographics creates demand for 850,000 households, (new families 1,9 - the passing of population 1,1)

Only 350,000 units per year are consumed/needed.

It will take years to get our housing inventory back to normal levels if all stays constant.


Here's a question: When the Census Bureau reports 2 million housing completions in 2007 and 2008, and the housing stock increasing by 4 million units over this period, which, if any, of these pieces of data should we believe?


Byzantine_Ruins (member) wrote on Thu, 04/16/2009 - 9:10am. Wrote:
"Gee I guess all those people who said "don't give yourself powers you wouldn't enjoy if Hillary Clinton had them" maybe had a point. Wonder when I'm gonna hear a "wow we were stupid to start playing the politics of criminalizing political opposition in earnest" out of the Right.

Oh right, never. "

I heard about wire tapping folks that communicated directly with terrorists and all of the liberal complaints about that, but as far as this database you describe, I don't think I ever heard of it. As for putting folks on lists, that goes WAAAAAAAAY back. Remember the lists of Communists from the '30s compiled by JEH that was used by McCarthy in the '50s? My Dad (in the '60s) always warned me about organizations like the KKK, and never to get involved unless you wanted to be on a FBI list of "subversive groups", and then there were the Clintons in the '90s who had the FBI files on most Republican politicians in DC stacked up in the Whitehouse basement in the hands of a known political operative back '90s. Careful where you aim that paint gun Wink
BTW, this leads to a humorous aside:

Back in the '60s when we lived in Alabama, my folks moved from Birmingham to a small town south of there in large part because of the riots that followed the church bombing that killed those little girls (that is NOT the humorous part). My Dad took a job teaching in a small backwoods town where there was this older teacher who was convinced that there was a communist cell in this town of perhaps 100 people at most.

There were also some ruffians in school who were constantly pulling pranks like flipping my Dads VW upside down after school was out and the teachers were still inside making lesson plans, grading papers, etc. In any event, this older teacher would rant about the communists, and insist that these kids were involved, and generally act like a buffoon, and so the kids decides to pull a prank on him.

They signed him up for the Russian magazine Soviet Life and the teaching of Mao Tse Tung, etc., all of which were free during the Cold War, and then proceeded to notify the FBI that this old guy was a communist. The FBI sent 4 agents down to this town, and they completely filled the little boarding house tht was the only place to stay for miles around. They began interviewing people, and apparently interrogated the old teacher about the accusations (remember, this was the '60s, and there had been a major bombing, and both the KKK and the Black Panthers were active in the area).

In the end, the kids bragged about it to their friends, he FBI caught on, and then made them pee-their-pants by threatening to try them for mail fraud (a Federal crime), but in the end, it issue was just dropped. I always enjoy hearing my Dad tell that story.


The total lack of construction is a healthy thing for the market I think. I've never met a builder that didn't want to build, no matter the market conditions. So the lack of available construction financing has been a good thing that has allowed us to burn through foreclosures for close to two years. We need to continue to do this before anybody puts anymore supply into the market.


Cinco-X

Just because Boehner said it, doesn't make it true. He is twisting the language in that report to suit his political liking. What the report actually said, and it was a gov report, not a "liberal/democratic" one, is that extremist groups would attempt to recruit former military members due to their skills, and their disaffection die to a hurrible economy could make them succeptable.

Boehner is a tool, and rarely make any sense. He is an embarassment to the Republican party, as are many these days.

Oh yea, I'm a vet.


Non-perishable and enormous glut. Supply overwhelms demand. Prices continue to fall. Bulldozers anyone?


"Only 350,000 units per year are consumed/needed..."

Lots of nice, nondilapidated homes for sale in Upstate NY. Nobody wants to live there, however. They want sunshine and golf courses 24/7/365. Oh, and they want 5,000 square foot homes too, even if they're too big for the family.

You're not taking the flocking behaviors of humans into account.


Done