US Housing Prays For Fed Cuts
New construction activity in the US rebounded last month from what, as initially reported anyway, was a four-year low.
Housing starts rose 3% in June to a 1.353 million rate, the government said Wednesday.
That was better than the 2% increase consensus expected and it came off a higher base -- May's pace was revised up to 1.314 million.
I don't know if I'd call that "encouraging," exactly. The whole thing -- US housing, I mean -- still feels like limbo.
Home builder sentiment slipped to a
So rates down, new supply and old supply up.
But, I would expect demand to surge and that will more than offset the increase in supply, so prices head much higher.
Will affordability really improve?
Well, that’s the big question, but by that logic, there’s nothing anybody can do. Keep rates where they are? Homes are unaffordable. Raise rates? Homes are unaffordable. Lower rates? Homes are unaffordable.
It seems like we’re getting into more and more of these situations these days, where you have people suggesting — in many cases tacitly and accidentally, and in other cases out of some weird fetish for defeatism — that outcomes which, in normal times, would fall under the “That’s not an option” category, are somehow acceptable.
This reminds me of a situation I got into a while back where I was trying to make a payment that had to be made, and between the Post Office, the people I was trying to pay and the person I was paying to facilitate the payment, nobody could get the payment where it needed to go, and yet everyone insisted it had to be made. Finally, I just went to the bank, pulled out $8,567, drove three hours to the relevant office, took a number, waited my turn in line, sat down in front of an actual person and put the cash on her desk with the paper bill.
Point is: If something has to be done (in this case we have to make it affordable for people to purchase shelter), it has to be done. Period. That payment had to be made. And by God, I made it. Throwing our hands up and saying “Oh well!” won’t work in the case of unaffordable housing. Because eventually, homelessness will spiral. Indeed, it already is.