Housing starts fall by 4.5 percent in October to lowest level since 1959

[brooklynite]

Source: MSNBC

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Read more: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/

[fasttense]

1. Prices are dropping in housing, gas and the Consumer Price Index

Can we call it the 2nd Republicon Great Depression yet?

Isn't that what distinguishes a recession from a depression is falling prices?

[willing dwarf]

3. Depression, is it all in my head?

Depression. Nice when the world & the economy are in sync with my own feelings.

Absence of jobs & absence of credit. People out of work all over. No one with money to spend on anything, and an economy that relies on consumer spending for 70% of its GNP... Sounds like a depression alright. Of course, recessions are measured, while depression is largely psychological...

[willing dwarf]

2. View from family & friends in the building trades

Our mortgage broker told us last month that there wasn't money available for new construction. The only housing that could get started last month was people who had capital available outside the mortgage industry. That would mean only major building companies like Toll Brothers...

My husband worked for 30 years as a carpenter, and most of his friends are in the building trades. Most of them are back home working on their own houses. I remember 20 years ago there was usually about 3 bad years for people in the trades, but October is a few months early.

Only one in 8 of our friends has any work on, and he's fronting 5 months of money himself, just to pay his crew (plasters) -- He's doing work now that he won't be paid for for five months or more.


And what's even worse is that all the fellows who went back to Ireland are heading back out of that country, coming here or England, or who knows where, to try to get their old jobs back as carpenters, plumbers, plasterers etc.

[Hawkowl]

4. Half the people

Considering the US population was half of what it is today, this news is tremendously bad.

[sledgehammer]

8. Is there a positive hidden in here?

There surely is a glut of homes, and that has contributed to decreased prices and lost equity.

Fewer starts are probably necessary for prices to start stabilizing and eventually make a recovery, so that homeowners start getting their equity back.

Not trying to minimize the many bad signs of this news at all (increased unemployment, housing market still not bottoming out, weakened confidence, etc). But just trying to throw in one small positive in the jungle of misery.

[customerserviceguy]

10. Houses that are not on the market because they haven't been started

will be replaced by houses on the market because they have been foreclosed on.

If I were a builder, I'd find a way to hook up with a lender needing to have foreclosure houses fixed up after they were trashed either by the last borrower or the vandals that always seem to find such places after they've been abandoned.

[Roland99]

5. Housing starts fall to record-low level in October (lowest since WWII)

Source: MarketWatch

WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) - U.S. home builders reduced their starts of new homes by 4.5% in October, driving new construction to the lowest level since just after World War II, the Commerce Department estimated Wednesday.

Housing starts dropped to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 791,000 in October, the slowest pace since similar records were first kept during the housing boom in the late 1940s.

Housing starts have now fallen 38% in the past year and are down about 70% from the peak in early 2006.

Building permits, which are typically less volatile than the starts data, fell 12% to a record-low seasonally adjusted annual rate of 708,000 in October, down 40% in the past year.

Read more: http://www.marketwatch.com/news/story/Housing-starts-fall-record-low/story.aspx?guid=%7BE01C34FA%2D41A3%2D4097%2D9B7A%2D242F06B60AF9%7D&dist=hplatest

[ComtesseDeSpair]

6. On The Bright Side...

Maybe developers will start fixing up the existing houses instead of tearing them all down to put up McMansions. Good taste can only prosper.

[Name removed]

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[HereSince1628]

9. The 59 recession was the beginning of the end of my father's career as a master carpenter

I remember that winter, it started with cabbage soup and ended with suppers such as peanut butter soup and popcorn. If it hadn't been for his mortgage being only $29 a month there would have been 7 of us living in a station wagon.

I have empathy for what the families of folks in the residential construction industry will face this winter and spring.