Back in March, the Kansas City branch of the Federal Reserve stated the obvious. US home construction was stuck near the lowest level in the 60 years of records being kept. Despite a decade having passed since the prior bust turned to boom, and with the economy booming, it was apparently worth mentioning. Obviously, it wasn’t obvious to everyone since [...]
Home construction estimates are notoriously variable. They can change oftentimes by a substantial amount on a month-by-month basis, and the numbers are just as frequently subject to serious revisions in the short run. Still, we have to note when there are big moves even in these high frequency series, though keeping in mind no definitive conclusions are available from them [...]
Even after several years of them, monetary policymakers continued to tread carefully with large scale asset purchases (LSAP). Otherwise known as quantitative easing (QE), in the US they were first announced all the way back in the darkest days of global financial panic in 2008. Yet, in 2012 and 2013 concerns remained that they could prove too powerful. Then-Richmond Fed [...]
US homebuilders haven’t been this happy since the dot-com era. Not even the housing mania of the mid-2000’s had builders feeling this good about things. According to the National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB), the trade group that represents firms in the industry, their sentiment index registered a blistering 74 in December 2017. Predictably, that’s got a lot of people excited [...]
Home construction activity bounced back in October from several months of appreciable weakness. It may have been hurricane related where plans and projects delayed by the path of Harvey and Irma were finally cleared to resume. More likely, in my view, it was just the normal variation that the construction figures always have exhibited. Total permits filed were a seasonally [...]
Housing construction continues to lag in 2017. Total permits in July fell on a seasonally-adjusted basis to 1.22 million. While not a huge decline, it continues to undershoot the post-taper trend that began in 2013 (after the mini-bubble wave crested from the trough of the housing bust). The break in that trend dates, unsurprisingly, to late 2015 and the near-recession [...]
Housing construction has cooled off again after a small rebound in activity late last year. Total permits filed in April 2017 was estimated to have been 1.23 million (SAAR), down from 1.26 million in March. Unadjusted, permits were flat year-over-year and remain on average in the low single digits for growth. Despite a reported as well as estimated shortage of [...]
Housing starts unexpectedly fell sharply, for once justifying the use of the description without quotation marks. The decline was concentrated in the multi-family segment. Though apartment construction statistics are highly volatile, this is far beyond the usual wide variation. The seasonally-adjusted annual rate had been above 400k each of the prior three months, so to suddenly tank to just 250k [...]
In yet another data point that identifies depression rather than a Great Recession, the Wall Street Journal reported last week what most people outside the economics profession had realized a long time ago. Janet Yellen likes to say that the housing market is recovering, highlighting the economic sector as one of the few bright spots left. The FOMC regularly and [...]
The June 2016 FOMC statement included an admission that the labor market might not have been quite as unassailable as had been thought dating back to 2014. That was likely the reason for the assumed change in stance, as even KC Fed President Esther George was unable to bring herself (LINK HERE) to vote against sticking with the 25 – [...]
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