Economic Charts

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Sunday, February 20, 2011

Housing Data Slowing

This week the Housing Permits, Starts and Completions report was released.  As you can see from the chart below starts were up by 76k, Permits were down by 65k and Completions were flat in January.  If you dig back in history (will work on getting the history together for this) you'll see that completions are inverted from starts and completions are trending down.  My takeaway from this is that many have contracted for a house, but quite a few are not able to get all the way through the process for various reasons.  

A few points, how anybody expected housing to continue growing forever, I do not know (not a sustainable model).  Another point is that just because there are completions doesn't mean that the property actually settled and transfered to a buyer, some sits on the market un-owned (do not have the data on how much though).  An interview from King World News showed that this is just adding to the already excess inventory on the market which will further depress prices in housing.

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