Posted on 06/16/2017 6:40:26 AM PDT by repentant_pundit
Investing.com – The number of housing starts and building permits issued in the U.S. unexpectedly tumbled in May, dampening optimism over the health of the U.S. housing sector, official data showed Friday. In a report, the U.S. Commerce Department said that housing starts decreased by 5.5% from the month before to hit a seasonally adjusted 1.092 million units last month from April’s total of 1.156 million units, a downward revision from the initial 1.172 million. Analysts had expected May’s reading to rise 4.1% from the prior month’s initial reading to 1.215 million. Meanwhile, the number of building permits issued declined by 4.9% to a seasonally adjusted 1.168 million units last month from 1.228 million the month before. Economists had forecast permits to rise 1.8% to 1.250 million units in May.
(Excerpt) Read more at investing.com ...
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No wonder at $325,000 for a starter house
Oh, yeah. The Deep State in the Federal Reserve is working its magic. No rate hikes during ubama’s reign, and what? two going on three since the inauguration of our President?
Yup, I was skeptical of ALL government reporting when Obama was in office and feel the same way today. The Bureaucracy pumped up the liberals numbers and are lowering this presidents numbers.
In the run up to election day in 2016 the Jobless rate kept dropping while the number of jobs kept increasing just like Obama’s job approval numbers suddenly took off for the high 50’s in the last 2.5 months before election day after languishing in the low to mid 40’s for years.
Watch. Real estate industry will spin this as a housing "shortage", in hopes that prices go even higher.
Not only that, but property taxes to boot. Which, in my neck of the woods of Upstate NY, can be $6,000 to $10,000 total annually for an existing home in the $150,000 to $200,000 price range.
Federal reserve is jacking up interest rates in order to crash the economy. That’s why housing is down.
There’s a race of sorts going on: Federal reserve trying to crash the system while Trump’s cutting regulations left and right to try and jump start the economy. No way to tell who’s going to win the race.
House at the end of our street just went on the market for $285,000 which IMO is at least $85,000 more than it should be listed and exceeds the Zillow estimate by almost $75,000. Used to be occupied by couple who arrived shortly after Katrina. Never saw a realtor’s sign in the yard but suddenly an older Chinese lady was living there with a couple of young Mexicans who obviously were doing lots of cosmetic work inside. House flippers? Who knows. Really creates a problem for other owners of similar houses in the area who will see their property taxes take another huge jump if it ends up selling for anywhere close to the listing price.
The legs on Obama’s table are no longer being held up. The legs on Trump’s table are being chopped.
Hasn’t there been a shortage of construction laborers? This may be the real cause.
There is no shortage of labor in the USA. None. There is also no shortage of greedy contractors that want to pay wetbacks under the table and cry there are jobs Americnas don't want to do.
There’s that word again: “unexpectedly”. Consider granny at the fed raising interest rates and saying she’ll keep doing so (to rob Trump of a recovery)
Tell that to my boy in Utah. He and his wife have been waiting months for their $300k+ home to be built. The builder is swamped with work, putting up homes in this price range. Any open space around Salt Lake City is being gobbled up for tract homes.
I see the same around St. George in the south.
Utah is one of the busiest lumber markets in the country right now. They are just slammed with business.
The biggest problem is a shortage of available trucks to go to this market. There is very little material to load on a flatbed to come back out of Utah(except salt).
With the exception of some parts of the northeast and New England(CT specifically) all our retail and wood truss manufactures business is very busy this year. We have retail lumber and wood truss manufacturers telling us their business is up 15-20% over last year.
The Lumber Broker
One of my kids works on a railroad in that area. He said that for the last eight years he has gone through areas that had vacant fields all along the tracks. Now they are filling up fast with corporate buildings or distribution centers.
This reminded me of when I was a kid when WWII ended and remember people saying we would slip back into the Depression again, but people now had money and a pent up demand for EVERYTHING and the economy took off. Evidently during the obama years, corporations just sat on their money and when Candidate Trump became President, the same blow-the-safety-valves events are occurring.
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