The stimulus housing bubble is over and the confidence of new home builders is dropping again. Are you surprised.
Until we have a true recovery, not an artificially induced, taxpayer subsidized recovery, we will not recover from the housing bubble. Sure, the stimulus helped from June to October of last year, but all it really did was pull some buyers forward. The continuation of the benefits has not helped the market as the buyers have already bought.
Too bad the builders are figuring it out now…
The January HMI fell one point to 15, its lowest point since June of 2009. Two of its three component indexes registered one-point declines, with the index gauging current sales conditions and the index gauging traffic of prospective buyers falling to 15 and 12, respectively. The index gauging sales expectations in the next six months held even, at 26.
The HMI edged down by a single point in three regions, with the Northeast falling to 22, the Midwest down to 11 and the South declining to 16. The HMI fell three points in the West, to 16. via Press Release
[...] the end of the year and into 2011. In line with the weak housing numbers, Tom Royce reports that the Builders Confidence Index has dropped. Finally, not surprisingly, the WSJ reports that the number of subprime mortgages currently with [...]