« October 2005 | Main | December 2005 »
November 21, 2005
crap on a cracker
the unsold inventory iz now at a 17 year high
but what the fuck makes this pedantic gurgle cogent....
" This is the sign of a soft landing in the marketplace"
Nicolas Retsinas, Harvard University
who's to say it won't brake loose
into an avalanche of tumbling prices ????
certainly nothing..so far
allows any one not a dogmatist
to make that call
oh by the way
this same prophet adds
" At some point house prices had to moderate"
=========================================
Posted by the baron at 08:46 PM | Comments (0)
November 20, 2005
more on STALLING the engine of prosperity
so hey
we can wax wise here
building and rebuilding
our homes ....
a perpetual motion machine
it ain't
---------------------------------------
so lets get specific
when will the house building slump
1) hit
and
2)how hard ???
answer
1) sooner rather then for the better
and
2) harder then a shaq slam on saturday nite
=============================================
=========================================
pre read note:
mortgage credit is the commanding heights here
all could be moved nearly at will
up or down
and yet
given wall streets need for stealth
one can only imagine
whattheir boy
gentle ben has plans/orders
to do to us.......
---------------------------------------
lire this spavened old lady gray column
as it meanders and ruminates :
"THERE'S a growing consensus
that the housing market is cooling off"
-------
throwing that lead's
about like
crying
" fire in the house
fire in the house "
when only smoldering char remains ---------------
lets be number types here...
" housing starts fell
5.6 percent
in October
from year-ago levels....
building permits fell
6.7 percent"
not exactly a rout yet ....
---- but notice what a job bloom
house sales and building have been ----------------
"from November 2001 to October 2005
housing and real estate
accounted for
36 percent
of private-sector
payroll job growth"
" 836,000 out of the total
of 2.3 million
private-sector jobs created "
---------- try replacing that on the gallop
and is it a choice sector after all .... ------------
"its labor intensive
And unlike the manufacturing sector
the money pouring into
residential real estate
and the housing industry
this is demand for American labor"
------- and how do we look
history wise ????-------------
"Residential investment
as a share of gross domestic product
is at the highest level in 50 years,"
-------- 50 year high
wow
but errr
'residential investment'
what does fucking that exactly include ????
and
as that may unfold
should it be expressed as
a share of
or just compared to
GDP ????
damned if i'm gonna bother to find out ------------------
--------- but here's a number pair
we can squeeze hold of ------------------
" real-estate-related industries
accounted for
9.7 percent
of total domestic employment
in the second quarter
of 2005
up from
9.0 percent
in the fourth quarter
of 2001"
----------- the delta
.7%
out of 130 million jobs
i make that
900,000 extra jobs
ties to the above number eh ???---------------------
"In California, 13.4 percent of jobs
in the second quarter of 2005
were housing-related,
versus 12.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2001"
------------- the fall will be
that much harder out in lotus land ----------------
forecast :
"Housing is going to go from
key contributor
to significant drag on job growth."
AND REMEMBER THIS DOESN'T HAVE TO HAPPEN
ONLY GENTLE BEN WILL MAKE IT SO
QED
SEE YA IN TEMPLE
....SUCKERS
Posted by the baron at 05:04 PM | Comments (0)
November 19, 2005
when mortgage money gets rationed
the real
life and death games
are not on cable
===========================================
next years pain max tale:
the new gentle ben fed
croaks
mortgage originations
not by "market" rate increases
but by micro reg screw tightening
so why the fuckle ???
well for sure not
whats on the warning label :
for sure not
to restore quality
to the home loan market
for sure not to
save people
from themselves
nope
the hill will get steeper
and run way more slippery
causethat's what makes
the job wheel
go round and round
fall out ....
(among much much else
of a bileous tincture)
fellow house agents brace yourselves
broker gross incomes
are about to take a cruel dixie
Posted by the baron at 10:51 PM | Comments (0)
November 06, 2005
jimmy mack rides again
my man james
is stalkin the NYC mayors office
once more
he as always
is runnin
on the only plank
any urban platform needs
rent is too damn high
freeze it for 8 years
================================
Posted by the baron at 11:33 PM | Comments (0)
November 05, 2005
housing construction loses steam
in my new role
as wind indicator ,,,,
================================
nyt
"THE building of houses,
which buoyed the American economy
during the 2001 recession
and then spurred the recovery,
is no longer leading the economy up "
"Fading Boom Figures released this week
by the Commerce Department
showed that private construction spending
set a record in September
but the third-quarter average
was only 6.5 percent above
the figure in the quarter a year ago
before adjusting for inflation"
That matched the growth
of the overall economy
By contrast
in 2004 residential construction spending
was growing twice as fast as the overall economy
While home builders were raking in the money
other areas of construction
were not nearly as strong
The most drastic change
was in office construction
which set a record in December 2000
when spending hit
a seasonally adjusted annual rate
of $58 billion
By early 2003
the rate had fallen more than half
and
most of that lost ground
has not been made up"
"A result has been a fundamental shift
in the proportion
of private construction spending
going to building homes and apartments
The proportion fluctuated around 60 percent
of total spending for years
but now it is around 70 percent"
" That makes the economy
potentially more vulnerable
than it usually is
if housing construction
were to decline sharply"
- -------- the amount
of housing construction as share
of the economies growth yes
but the intra sectoral
proportion..nonsense
commercial/ office/ industrial construction
is far more volitile
if not so interest sensitive--------------
"By contrast, office buildings
now account for a little more than
4 percent of the private construction budget
half what they accounted for in 2000"
------------ see what that number really shows ???
office building is boom and bust ---------
"Commercial building, of stores and malls,
has not suffered as much,
but it has lost a quarter
of its market share "
"manufacturing construction's share
of the total construction pie
above 9 percent a decade ago
fell to 3 percent
but has now stabilized
and even begun to edge up
In dollars, September spending
was at an annual rate
of $27.6 billion
up almost 40 percent
from the low reached in February 2003"
An area with little sign of a turnaround is
" Spending on communications sites
has stabilized
but power plant spending
in September reflected an annual rate
of $22.6 billion
the slowest pace since early 2001
Over all
the utility share
of private construction spending
is down to 4.2 percent
the lowest since the government
began collecting such figures in 1993."
There has been widespread talk of a cooling in the housing market, and mortgage applications have slowed in recent weeks - possibly an indicator of slower sales to come. But while
"spending on residential construction
was rising at 20 percent
a year ago"
Posted by the baron at 05:23 PM | Comments (0)
November 04, 2005
i may never blog again
this was why i was laid off
this blasted blog
too glib too flip
too squalid
lesson
whatever it is
make it look sunny
and on the up and up
=================================
Posted by the baron at 09:17 PM | Comments (0)
November 01, 2005
varian on the too big lots spiral
i'm back and catching up
but this squib
by one hal varian
prof at berkley
needs one of your baron's
famous
fine tooth comb
curry jobz
=======================
from a piece in the nyt
october 20 ..or so
"...In the short run, the supply of housing
in most areas is more or less fixed.
Hence the price of housing is determined primarily by
the demand side of the market "
" by how much people are willing to pay for housing"
" In the last few years
we have seen historically low mortgage rates
which feed directly into housing demand"
" In several locations
particularly on the East and West Coasts
where land-use restrictions
make it difficult to increase
the supply of housing
prices have been pushed up
to unprecedented levels"
"Can anything be done? "
"If you really wanted to push housing prices down
you would increase taxes on housing. ..."
"Of course, the total cost of the housing
(purchase price plus the present value of the taxes)
would be unchanged
so this really does not solve
the housing cost problem either"
" In California, tax policy has played a significant role in housing price dynamics. Proposition 13,
passed in 1978, limited property tax increases
to 2 percent a year for owner-occupied homes
But when the house is sold
, the property tax assessment
is based on the sale price.
This means the new owner
typically faces a significantly higher
property tax bill than the old owner
Proposition 13 has been called a "tax on moving."
Indeed it is... It is a lot cheaper
to add a bedroom to a three-bedroom house
than to buy a similar four-bedroom house...
For the same reason,
empty-nesters have strong tax incentives
to keep their houses...
The result is that fewer houses
come on the market than would otherwise be the case
pushing prices up even more
for the limited stock of housing that is available"
"So what is the answer to high home prices?
Basic economics tells us that for housing prices to fall
we have to see a reduction in demand
or an increase in the supply of housing"
" There is some hope on the demand side
As interest rates rise,
we should see some moderation in demand;
indeed, it appears that housing prices
are flattening out in some areas."
" Ultimately, the only reliable way
to make housing more affordable
is to increase the supply"
" But a new house requires
land zoned for housing
We cannot make more land
so we either have to use the land we have
more intensively
or we have to build houses farther from jobs
. ... In urban California,
traffic has become increasingly congested,
putting a limit on how far away
from their jobs people can live.
Land use restrictions are tight
in many desirable residential areas,
and political forces are aligned
against relaxing these restrictions.
Imagine someone who scrimps and saves
to buy his dream house
in an area zoned for one-acre lots
The last thing he wants to see
is his neighbor's lot being subdivided
to build two or three new houses. ...
Zoning laws and land use restrictions
are unpopular among those seeking
less-costly housing
since they push up the price
But by the same token
once a searcher becomes an owner
he often becomes a fervent supporter
of such restrictions
As Pogo put it,
"We have met the enemy and he is us."
Posted by the baron at 07:29 PM | Comments (0)