Monthly Housing Starts and Building Permits

Housing is a very confusing area these days.  The building permits number came out essentially flat (slightly up) meaning that not many new building permits were applied for in the previous month.  Forecast called for .56M and the actual was .57M, up from the previous .56.  Housing Starts was actually up from a forecast of .55M to .60M (previous was .54M).  This is a surprising number considering the number of foreclosures on the market flooding the market with inventory.  The scary thing is that it is hard to believe this is coming from any real new demand as the their is so much inventory (and more coming on every day) in the economy.  Remember that housing starts is the number of new residential houses starting construction during the previous month.  This is only going to add more inventory to the market which will contribute to the fall in house prices.  Now new information coming forth that some of the banks foreclosing on properties and may not have had clear title to these properties is muddying the waters.  Also, GMAC Mortgage putting out a letter to freeze all foreclosures (even ones in progress or about to finish) for some unknown reason (to include upcoming foreclosures).  One can only imagine that they realized they don't have clear title or maybe some other event is on the horizon.  [ Read more on GMAC ... ]