Posted on 05/30/2011 9:29:40 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
The U.S. housing market is going through an adjustment of historic proportions. Before 2006, when the housing slump commenced, American home builders regularly built as many as 2 million new houses annually, rarely less than a million. This amount was needed to keep up with new household formation, immigration, homeowners moving up, and replacement due to obsolescence. Since then the number of new houses built has dropped drastically—the seasonally adjusted annual figure announced by the federal government in February 2011 was about 400,000! What's going on?
The recession, obviously. High unemployment and unease about the economy have made potential first-time homebuyers leery of entering the market, and many have decided to wait on the side lines. Although house prices have fallen, few are convinced that they have bottomed, and no one wants to buy a house and see its price decline. The large number of foreclosed (or about to be foreclosed) houses on the market, which account for no less than four out of 10 sales of existing homes, likewise dampens demand for new houses. And those willing to take the plunge discover that, despite low interest rates, lenders who were burned by the subprime mess now require large down payments. The other chief cause for weak demand is a slowdown in household formation—the U.S. Census reports that the rate of household formation is currently lower than at any time since 1947, as people put off getting married and starting a family. According to my colleague, real estate economist Peter Linneman, the marginal household size, which has historically hovered around two or three, shot up to more than six in 2009 and 2010, the result of doubling-up and moving in with relatives.
Common wisdom is that eventually the housing market will stabilize.....
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
You get the convoluted double talk post of the day award!
ROTFLMAO! I'm a great-grandpa with all my teeth. If that's the best you have, stay in town--and behave, or we'll cut off the groceries and you can see what real animals act like--in your hive.
Mark Twain summarized the issue for you:
“There’s liars, there’s damn liars, and then there’s statisticians.”
That's 7.5 trillion, divide by 7.5 billion people, and get 1000 sq ft per person. 30x30 is 900 so everybody gets 30 feet by 30 feet.
If we never have a "boom" like 2002-2006 again, it'll be too darn soon for me.
You know, back when America's economy was the envy of the world's - when our spending and debt were well under control - when there were safe investments that kept ahead of inflation -
millions and millions of Americans were living in houses like the "Lustron Home" and didn't feel poor at all.
We have lots more eye candy and bling-bling now, but a much shakier economic foundation. I'd be happy to undo that trade.
Liberals are f$$ing cowards.
If you work hard and you want a huge home, go for it.
Why are these wussies so afraid of exceptionalism?
That’s better. Feel better now? Good.
There will always be some demand for new homes. Some folks just don't want to live in a home that someone else lived in, before. There may be FEWER new homes, but builders want to stay in business, so they'll always look for opportunities to build new.
I remember the Washington Hotel, St. Louis, Missouri,in 1957, where you opened the windows to the outdoors just like at home with the upper half lowered part way and the bottom half raised part way. The transom over the room door ventilated the hot air out of the upper half of the window, and the the lower admitted the cooler air and ran underneath the room door. You left your shoes in the hallway overnight to be cleaned and polished. A black electric fan in the room was for the warmer nights.
They used to have a riverboat on the Mississippi River for couples to dance into the late night, because the air temperatures over the river were cooler and a way of escaping the hot summer night air ashore. Some of the movie theaters were popular if for no other reason than they were one of the few places a person could go and experience “refrigerated air” for a few hours during the heat waves.
“Reckon’” has become a part of my vocab since I started dating a country gal.
“Allow” is another one where the context had me scratching my head. Person A talks with person B than afterwords person A tells person C what Person B said.
Person C replies to person A, “What did you allow”?...meaning what was your reply to person B?
Yonder is another favorite in that family and has great variance in distance.
It all depends upon the building codes and property taxes for your local jurisdiction. Some do, and some don't. The greedier governments interfere with builder-owner choices by arbitrarily slapping taxes on necessities and/or luxuries.
After Britain lost the American colonies in the Revolution in part over taxation policies, they levied a series of ruinous taxes at home in Britain. The government began taxing the number of windows with glazing, so the taxpayers began to replace window glass with paper, cloth, and other alternatives. The government responded by taxing windows, so the taxpayers bricked up and boarded over the windows. The government then dictated building codes that required a certain number of windows, which then could be taxed.
In some places, it's a fight over whether or not the square footage of a garage or other space is taxed at all or taxed at the higher rate based upon whether or not it is a structure attached to the house or detached from the house.
Farmers have been taxed out of business by county governments basing the tax rates on arbitrary assumptions about how much income the land should produce. A farm with little tillable and grazable acreage and extensive woodland with uneven topography is taxed at a rate higher than any possible profit from a crop could produce. In answer to complaints the county government suggests more efficient usage of the acreage by clearcutting the woodland to cultivate land and soil not suitable for cultivation. The same government authorities then complain about the loss of forest habitat and its effect upon the environment. Duh!
Sorry, but the crime stats are quite telling. In fact, most major cities in the mid west have *considerably* more crime per capita, than the major cities in CA, or the west coast for that matter. This is no secret.
You failed to see the point and the irony!
It costs more to install the infrastructure and square footage in a house which also reduces or eliminates the need for long term external sources of energy for heating and cooling.
By assuming, wrongly, that there is some kind of right for government to take more money from people with a larger and perhaps more expensive to construct home, you also deter the development of housing that is heated and cooled by the passive Solar energy collected in such a larger home. Indeed, such a government can and does tax a family out of such a larger home that was built at a fraction of the cost of a home less than half the size of the larger rhome.
Screw you
If I had my atomic hovercraft, I wouldn’t need any taxpayer funded roads.
I hate cities with a passion. I this is America and I’d like to go where I damn well please, stay where I please, have a frigging 50,000 square foot house if I chose to do so.
one of the few places a person could go and experience “refrigerated air” for a few hours during the heat waves.
The first time my wife had to go to the ER a few years ago, she was surprised at what she saw; The local poor Amish would come to the ER waiting room to watch cable TV and enjoy some AC, buying snacks and drinks from the machines. She thought that I was kidding at first, then after several hours of waiting and watching the people, she saw that they had nobody that was a patient; it was just a night out at the movies for them. LOL
In your case, yes. Expect a knock on your door at 4:00 a.m. tomorrow. PROTIP: Have one small bag packed.
Are you advocating genocide?
Only for child molesters like you.
I find it amazing that so many who have never swiped an egg from under a hen nor picked a tomato nor scrambled in the fresh-plowed earth picking up potatoes as we did in our youth feel smugly 'superior' to those who feed them. They've never built an engine, sculled a skiff, skinned their own dinner, nor shot nor caught it, but somehow their microcosmic existence in an artificial construct qualifies them to tell us how to live in an environment completely alien to them.
While I would miss the archives of artifacts and classical artwork such cities offer, I know people who can render an image on canvas, play a passable tune--admittedly not of symphonic quality--but adequate for my limited dancing skills (Mrs. Joe is a saint!), and the local High Schools provide sporting events which make up for what they lack in prestige and fanfare with enthusiasm and lack of gross expense.
One thing about rural living, if you did not grow up there, you quickly learn to discern between your 'wants' and your 'needs', and if somewhere in the mix the urbane find our colloquialisms archaic, so be it. At least we can all tell who's who in the first words of a conversation.
And I didn't even say "victuals" (pronounced "vittles" for the uninitiated)!
"Holler" (hollow) is another favorite of mine, used from the tidewater to the Blue Ridge and beyond, and 'up yonder holler', could mean a location reached by some hike between ridges or rowing in the shallows on a favorable tide, depending on where you were. They can keep their highfalutin' citified ways, I prefer good banjo music to hip-hop anyway.
I've said for quite a while here the best place to be is away from anywhere connected to a busline, rail line, or otherwise. Any urban area controlled by Eric Holder's People is a place in which not to live. There is a reason for all this social-network organized swarming and it isn't pretty. It will only get worse. And, when the government services break down it will get downright nasty. You don't want to be anywhere near that.
In case you aren't aware, this is not a Yahoo! chatroom. We have rules here.
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