Sunday, May 1, 2011

America's Largest Industry, Housing, Still Sick

Yesterday, the March Housing Starts number was released. It was characterized as "stronger than analysts expectations," which sounds good. But new housing starts were down 13.3% compared to a year ago. That means there were fewer jobs, less money going into the economy and less taxes being paid.
Today Existing Home Sales numbers were released. In what must be an effort at comedy, the National Association of Realtors characterized March as "decent" even though sales were down nearly 3% from a year ago -- a year ago was not a "decent" year for home sales or for the housing industry in general. It was rotten. Isn't the logic of the situation that worse than rotten is "really rotten" not "decent?"

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