HOUSING STARTS STILL FLAT – ALL THINGS CONSIDERED, A GOOD SIGN
May 24th, 2009 categories: Buyer Strategies, Seller Strategies
This has been the pattern for 4 months running…and now again in April, single-family new home construction remained flat. As I have mentioned in other posts, when you are in the middle of something that is clearly the present reality, it seems hard to see it in the context of the broader picture.
Remember not too long ago when houses were selling like hot cakes? At that moment it seemed like the trend would keep on going. But cycles happen, and this current cycle will eventually work its way to a change point, just as surely as the last one did.
For example, take note of these two items:
- The number of homes under contract to sell are rising
- The national housing inventory is down by nearly 1 million from March 2009
This set of data comes from the Commerce Department, and they did point out that there is a pretty sizable Margin of Error in this month’s report. In other words, the number of housing starts could have fallen, or it could have risen. Since January 2009 the monthly number has been about 360,000.
It will be another 3 months before we know whether the current numbers are right on target, but if they do hold it may be another indication that at least something resembling a “bottom” has started to form.
We will keep you posted.
