Thursday, August 26, 2010

Graphs: The decimation of the home-building industry

New housing permits:


New housing starts:


New single-family home sales:

9 comments:

  1. For decades, owning a home has been touted as the very heart of "the American Dream", but today that dream is out of reach for an increasing number of Americans. Why? It is because there are not nearly enough jobs for everyone. Without a jobs recovery, there simply is not going to be a housing recovery. Unfortunately, as the U.S. economy continues to come apart like a 20 dollar suit, even more Americans are going to lose their jobs and the U.S. housing industry will continue to experience a very painful decline.

    The truth is that this is not a short-term downturn in the housing market. During the past two decades, an insane amount of debt fueled an artificial housing bubble that drove home prices to ridiculous levels. Now the U.S. housing market is trying to correct itself, and no matter how many trillions of dollars the U.S. government throws at the problem the fundamentals of the marketplace are still going to have their way eventually.

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  2. "Isn't the only hope for the planet that the industrialized civilizations collapse? Isn't it our responsiblity to bring that about?"
    - Maurice Strong, founder of the UN Environment Programme

    "A massive campaign must be launched to de-develop the United States. De-development means bringing our economic system into line with the realities of ecology and the world resource situation."
    - Paul Ehrlich, Professor of Population Studies

    "The only hope for the world is to make sure there is not another United States. We can't let other countries have the same number of cars, the amount of industrialization, we have in the US. We have to stop these Third World countries right where they are."
    - Michael Oppenheimer, Environmental Defense Fund

    "Global Sustainability requires the deliberate quest of poverty, reduced resource consumption and set levels of mortality control."
    - Professor Maurice King

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  3. "Effective execution of Agenda 21 will require a profound reorientation of all human society, unlike anything the world has ever experienced — a major shift in the priorities of both governments and individuals and an unprecedented redeployment of human and financial resources. This shift will demand that a concern for the environmental consequences of every human action be integrated into individual and collective decision-making at every level."
    - UN Agenda 21

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  4. The most ABSURD real estate bubbles have been going on in India and China for the past 20-30 years, where homes have appreciated about a THOUSAND times. A one thousand US dollar investment in India's metro real estate in the 1970s is now worth more than a million US dollars. Home owners in India and China are unbelievably rich and are far more wealthy than their Western counterparts. Despite the ABSURD appreciation in the past 30 years, the mentality in India and China is that real estate is the easiest and best form of investment, with values doubling every 2-3 years. Note that these so called homes in India and China are small, with little features, very low quality, have no good infrastructure and so filthy that no sensible person would spend even a 100 bucks on, yet are being sold and bought for millions of dollars each in the greatest PONZI game ever played. Note also that the median income in these places is still just a few thousand dollars per year, yet the median home prices are about a million dollars. This PONZI game has created inflation, which then fuels the PONZI game even more and you get the idea. Compare all of this to the United States. Homes have hardly even tripled in value in the last 30 years, and yet, we are quick to point this out as a bubble. We are playing the reverse PONZI here, where we want to destroy absolutely fabulous homes to complete worthlessness. A regular 2000 sqft 4-BR American home would cost several million dollars everywhere in the world except in the USA, where it costs a measly USD 200000. Yep, Americans want everything for free. If it is not free, it has to be a bubble.

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  5. I was fascinated by this latest on CR today:

    http://calculatedriskimages.blogspot.com/2010/08/mba-state-mortgage-delinquency-q2-2010.html

    What's interesting to me is that DC shows a higher loan delinquency rate than Virginia - I'm wondering how long before we start to see a REO glut inside the District. I keep hearing "it's different here" and the like, but I remain skeptical. I am still excluding Arlington.

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  6. I like these charts!

    I like them very much!

    They are VERY VERY good charts!

    Hee Hee, Hee Hee!

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  7. Lots of homeowners felt a "wealth effect" on the way up...is it wrong for me as a renter to feel a "wealth effect" on their way down? Or am I confusing that with schadenfreude?

    Seriously though, are the rest of us not getting relatively richer? Why doesn't someone go on CNBC and talk about that...?

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  8. As a renter without an albratros mortgage around my neck, I am very well positioned to buy anything I want at MY price and not some price driven by speculation and hystria. So smell me!

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  9. nonpartisan said...
    I like these charts!

    I like them very much!

    They are VERY VERY good charts!

    Hee Hee, Hee Hee!



    Me too!

    Check out this last chart:

    http://www.recharts.com/cme.html

    Its called bellcurve aborted - CAW CAW CAW!!!

    ReplyDelete