Highest number of vacancies every recorded (goes back 40 years). More unwanted unneeded homes being added to inventory everyday by builders and desperate homedebtors. Demand cratering just as supply overwhelms.
Yup, looks like a bottom to me.
Not.
I don't get people who keep calling bottoms. Sure, you have The Corrupt David Lereah - he's paid to lie. But then you get the Lowes CEO this week saying that even though retail sales at his chain are plummeting, "We are encouraged by indications that our sales trends have bottomed."
Man, talk about missing the memo.
Even Bob Toll isn't calling bottom anymore, realizing he not only looked the fool last time he did that, but that there's this little thing called the SEC, and this little policy called Sarbanes Oxley, and you can't go out and just tell bald-face lies when you're the company's largest shareholder and CEO. No matter how much you want to pop your stock so you can keep unloading.
And finally, with those 2.1 million vacant homes, with millions more on the way, with nobody interested in buying them, my only questions are....
How fricking ugly will this get? And what year will we truly bottom?
Vacant Homes For Sale Cloud Economic Hopes
Amid brightening hopes that the U.S. housing market is stabilizing, some economists are zeroing in on a piece of data that could augur badly for the consensus view: the homeowner vacancy rate.
That figure, an often-overlooked measure of how many homes for sale in the country are empty, has climbed to its highest level since the Census Bureau began tracking it four decades ago. Last week, the bureau said that in the final three months of 2006 there were about 2.1 million vacant homes for sale.
That brought the national homeowner vacancy rate to 2.7%, up from 2.0% a year ago.
Yup, looks like a bottom to me.
Not.
I don't get people who keep calling bottoms. Sure, you have The Corrupt David Lereah - he's paid to lie. But then you get the Lowes CEO this week saying that even though retail sales at his chain are plummeting, "We are encouraged by indications that our sales trends have bottomed."
Man, talk about missing the memo.
Even Bob Toll isn't calling bottom anymore, realizing he not only looked the fool last time he did that, but that there's this little thing called the SEC, and this little policy called Sarbanes Oxley, and you can't go out and just tell bald-face lies when you're the company's largest shareholder and CEO. No matter how much you want to pop your stock so you can keep unloading.
And finally, with those 2.1 million vacant homes, with millions more on the way, with nobody interested in buying them, my only questions are....
How fricking ugly will this get? And what year will we truly bottom?
Vacant Homes For Sale Cloud Economic Hopes
Amid brightening hopes that the U.S. housing market is stabilizing, some economists are zeroing in on a piece of data that could augur badly for the consensus view: the homeowner vacancy rate.
That figure, an often-overlooked measure of how many homes for sale in the country are empty, has climbed to its highest level since the Census Bureau began tracking it four decades ago. Last week, the bureau said that in the final three months of 2006 there were about 2.1 million vacant homes for sale.
That brought the national homeowner vacancy rate to 2.7%, up from 2.0% a year ago.
