“Home sales are not up. That’s a lie.”
I am a lumber broker. I know that home sales and business for retail lumber dealers is up from a year ago, because my customers are telling me their busines is up. It is up much more in the south, mid atlantic and northeast than other areas. However, it is up everywhere. Even in places like Detroit. Pulte homes has been buying land all over the southwest. They are buying land while it is cheap. They are selling houses(MORE THAN LAST YEAR). They are selling new construction homes CHEAPER than existing foreclosed homes. The tax credit stimulated people to buy. The average price of homes around the country is up by 4 %. There are less homes for sale in the town I live in than there were one year ago. Also, homes that are priced realistically are selling within 3 months according to my friend who owns a real estate company. However, most of what is selling is smaller single family homes. Nobody is building McMansions anymore. However, with the expiration of the tax credit on April 30, my industry is concerned that this could cause business to slow up again.
You need to remember with housing we need to build about 1.4 million units / year just to keep up with population growth. Houses only last on the average 75 years. They need to be replaced. They burn down, destroyed in floods,etc. We overbuilt in 2003-2005(2 million starts). We ONLY built 525,000 in 2009. IT HAD TO GO UP. Starts were the lowest 60+ years. This year we might be all the way up to 750,000. I remember a few years ago when we(limber brokers)thought it could never go below 1 million. I am not ideologically motivated. I HAVE NEVER VOTED FOR A DEM IN MY LIFE. OBAMA IS A MARXIST. I work on STRAIGHT COMMISION. Do you know what that means ? I only make what I trade /earn. My income is off 50% from 2 years ago. Last year I made about the same as I made in 1990.
As far as the stock market, I sold ALL my stock/mutual funds two months ago. The only regret I have is selling my Asian investments. Asia is the future. Especially India & Hong Kong. Their tax laws make it very attractive to locate there.
Thank you for the inside info.
Wow! I do appreciate your taking the time to pass that info along to me.
IMHO, it doesn’t change the bottom line. I just read a report today, on the front page of my newspaper, that a bunch of economists who were polled say the recession is over. They provided no credible economic indicator that backs up the headline.
But down deep in the story is a comment about how we can expect total unemployment to continue rising. So who’s buying or gonna be buying these homes? My son works for the power generation industry. It is planning for at least a 20% demand drop for the coming year or 18 months. That’s on top of the approx. 15-20% drop since sbout 2 years ago.
In other words manufacturing will have all it can do to sustain its present production.
So what do we have: Continually rising unemployment, Onadacare, VAT, Tax and Trade, continuing housing slump, continuing intrusion by gov’t into our private lives, failing gov’t-controlled industries (car, banking and investing) and soaring deficits.
I mean you have to look at the whole picture, not just a sliver of it. There is no way we’re in recovery or enroute to recovery given the miasma that is America today.