Economics

Didn’t We Tell You Affordability Was the Key Issue?
Written by Jonathan Smoke   
06.12.2007

We aim to be on top of trends and key intelligence for our user community. Friday’s post turned out to be prescient as the Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies released their 2007 State of the Nation’s Housing report.

The key conclusion from their press release stated:
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Affordability Should Be a Top Concern
Written by Jonathan Smoke   
06.08.2007
We can debate when this market overall will hit bottom. Have we hit it already? Or, will we hit bottom sometime this fall, end of 2007, or into 2008? This of course is important to every player trying to drive sales in this tough environment.

One thing is for certain during this downturn and even into the next up-cycle: affordability is now one of the industry’s biggest concerns.
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Taking a Cue from Stock Fund Managers
Written by Jonathan Smoke   
06.04.2007
Lately I have been discussing the virtues of applying a form of portfolio management to residential housing investments. Whether you are a local builder, a regional developer, a land banker, a lender, or a national developer, your land holdings represent a portfolio. And we’ve got the benefit of decades of research in the broader world of equity investments to apply portfolio management concepts to land investments.
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Drilling Into “National” Home Price Stories
Written by Jonathan Smoke   
05.29.2007
While continuing the theme from yesterday’s post, today I also wanted to acknowledge the newest set of national pricing data.

The initial S&P/Case Shiller price indices for March were released yesterday. As covered by Paper Money, the March 2007 S&P/Case-Shiller index...
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Neither Supply Nor Demand Will Help the Average Builder This Year
Written by Jonathan Smoke   
05.25.2007
Last Thursday, NAHB released the May report from David Seiders, the Chief Economist of the NAHB. This exclusive report echoed many of the same observations and conclusions highlighted in the May 14 “Eye on the Economy” column in the Nation’s Building News.

The most critical observations covered very negative conditions in both supply and demand that are weighing heavily on new home sales in 2007 and will continue to wreak havoc at least for the remainder of the year.
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