Part of my business is housing related so I watch these numbers closely. The housing market has been in a lull for going on the last year. SF starts are in or around 600K SAAR and just haven’t moved. Any improvement in total starts has been driven by MF. Hopefully the recent improvement in the job market (NFP has averaged +270K the last 3 readings while the prior 12 were +190k) will drive household formation. So far that hasn’t caught up. I think we are a year away from a breakout.
RE isn’t a national market, so it’s very hard to make good on a national RE outlook. I think there are going to be places like NV, IL, FL that will struggle for a long time, particularly IL given its terrible fiscal, regulatory and tax policies.
PS how’s that velocity of money coming along?