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US Home Builders Just Stopped Building
Blame the weather if you like, but the pace of single-family home construction in America just collapsed by the most since the original COVID shock.
Anyone unlucky enough (or junior enough) to be logged in Friday saw the US government report a 14.1% plunge in single-family housing starts for July, the largest MoM decline since April of 2020, when the economy was shuttered by a mysterious plague.
As the figure shows, the annualized pace is now consistent with that witnessed on the heels of the
All of the contractors I know are Trump voters. Maybe it’s a conspiracy 😉 ?
It’s funny you should say that. I was in a builder’s office two years ago and I bumped into (literally) a life-sized cardboard cutout of Trump.
Me wife and I recently sold our existing home in a desirable neighborhood in L.A. County. It was a big place with a number of issues. We had 200 people view the home during a two-day open house. A number of them were developers looking to flip the property. We had sixteen offers, and sold to a family for $300,000 over asking in under a week. The buyer agreed to buy “as is,” and accepted our home inspection as the final word on the place. I never imagined any of that would happen, but I guess that is what a tight market can do. With rate cuts coming, I expect prices in my area to move sideways in the coming months, as supply and demand both increase, but who knows for sure?
There’s your argument for rate cuts. The economy needs people to start selling and buying homes. How much will be enough.