Posted on 10/03/2015 2:29:02 PM PDT by Lorianne
Housing starts fell from a downward-revised ~1.16 million to ~1.13 million in August 2015. This was below Wall Street estimates of just over 1.16 million. We also saw declines in single-family starts, which fell to 739,000 from 762,000. Multi-family starts fell to 381,000 from 390,000.
The real estate market in big cities is undoubtedly being influenced by foreign investors who want to diversify their holdings and are encouraged by the strength of the dollar. In addition, wealthy Chinese investors are taking advantage of the visa program, which promised a free green card to anyone who invests $500,000 and creates ten jobs. This is sending cheap capital to developers as well.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketrealist.com ...
I live here in SoCal and it looks like in my neighborhood things have cooled somewhat.
We have plenty of vacant homes here in NJ (even with the illegals we traffic here). I guess the freebies aren’t so great when the people who pay for them are all fleeing...
If I remember correctly New Jersey has one of the highest home taxes in the country.
That’s right (driven primarily by school taxes); as American taxpayers tire of providing the freebies for non-contributing people, they leave. Companies also buckle under the burden and flee.
The taxes crept up while we had a lot of decent private-sector jobs; as those went overseas or south over the past 20 years homeowners were trying to pay increasing tax bills with decreasing salaries. The most lucrative jobs here now are government jobs (teachers, cops); they are our upper middle class. The retirement benefits for those “workers” are killing us now (for people who retired decades ago).
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