Remember the cold and snowy winter? It was used as the excuse for every negative economic report over the last six months. It’s now July. If housing starts were delayed due to bad weather, there should have been a strong bounce back in the Spring and Summer. Plus, this is when people buy and sell houses because they don’t like to move when their kids are in school. Maybe it was too warm. Maybe it was too sunny. Maybe the corporate MSM propaganda machine has to come up with a new storyline to feed the ignorant masses.
The June figures were released today and they show a collapse in housing starts and permits. Housing starts were 13% BELOW the expectations of the millionaire Wall Street economists. They were 9.3% BELOW the DOWNWARDLY REVISED May numbers. The single family home starts were the lowest since November 2012. April was revised lower too.
So let me get this straight. Home prices have risen 25% since 2012, but housing starts are exactly where they were in 2012. Yeah, this is a strong healthy market driven housing recovery. No Federal Reserve/Wall Street scheme to enrich the oligarchs here. This surely benefits first time home buyers with trillions in student loan debt.
Please show me the housing recovery on this chart. The current level of single family housing starts is at the same or lower levels of every recession dating back 45 years. They are 65% below the most recent peak. They are 50% below the long term average. With the lowest mortgage rates in 50 years, this is all we got?
The housing market is rolling over and headed down again. Any dupe that got lured into buying a home in the last two years is going to get it good and hard as prices tumble again. Some people never learn.
