All the fundamentals remain in place, and the overall housing market continues to exhibit ongoing strength. Favorable mortgage rates, as well as strong household income and job growth, continue to bolster housing demand. |
As they generally have done throughout 2005, builders have maintained a healthy balance between supply and demand. |
I am worried about the potential for a trailing down process that gains some momentum. |
I basically have a wait-and-see attitude with some healthy suspicion about this report. Either there is something that all of those other reports are not telling us, or this will get revised. |
I call it the hidden supply or inventory. It remains to be seen how big a deal this [investor inventory] is, but that's the big question for housing this year. |
I do have this sort of weakening of the housing sector, but I think it should be thought of as a systematic cooling down process toward sustainable levels of activity and not viewed as kind of a classic housing downswing that's part of an economic cycle leading to a recession. |
I view the housing-starts and permit numbers for January as a temporary burst. |
I was obviously delighted to see this rebound. I think what it tells us is that the housing market is still fundamentally strong. |
I'm calling 2006 a simmering-down process. It's been one heck of a run. |
I've been expecting the housing-production component of GDP to move from a strong growth engine to a neutral or negative element in the U.S. economy over the next year and a half. |
It is a time-tested pattern. February has essentially returned to normal conditions, suggesting to me that we will see a substantial decline in housing starts. |
It was impossible to maintain double-digit price inflation like we've seen the past few years. |
It's been an unprecedented run for the housing sector. |
It's healthy. We do need to have that happen -- gracefully, though. Affordability problems are glaring in the hottest areas. We've reached the point where something's really got to give. |
It's really unprecedented, so you wonder if it can continue. |