Housing Market Experts Predict the Housing Markets That Will Recover First

Given the difficulty of trending the home building market, it’s only fitting that the five experts we asked for the first five housing markets to recover picked an ersatz grab-bag of markets from the Great Plains, the Deep South, and even the Industrial Midwest. There’s something for nearly every builder in here.

That said, the esteemed prognosticators managed to agree on a few early bloomers. Several were bullish on Washington DC, where federal spending is likely to boost employment in the short run, and Dallas, an affordable market that continues to churn out good jobs.

The experts steered clear of bubble markets, for the most part, with the exception of one analyst who  thought Sacramento would come back early since it dropped early. They looked for homes to industries—medical, energy, biotech–that are likely to benefit from stimulus or government spending. And they carefully considered whether home pricing in a market had “corrected.”

While several of the selected markets showed up on our list of The Healthiest Housing Markets for 2009, published two months ago, others were conspicuously absent. Top-ranked Houston, for instance, which appears to be going through a correction, didn’t make anyone’s list of the first to rebound.

John Burns always seems to be step ahead of the pack when it comes to forecasting the housing market, especially local demand. Among the first analysts to write that a major price correction was necessary before the market would rebound, Burns has since developed a local market forecasting tool.

Dubbed Housing Cycle GPA, the analytical model considers 29 years of history to determine a local market’s health. The primary drivers are local demand, supply, and affordability, along with what’s happening in the national economy. When two of the three local fundamentals rise, that usually means price appreciation is likely to occur, sometimes immediately, in other cases, over several years.

We asked the analysts at John Burns Associates to use the model to determine which five major home building markets might recover first. They produced a list that includes some metro areas with strong job formation, others where home builder competition is almost nil, and still others where price declines have made homes quite affordable.

1. Washington, DC Burns’ bullishness on this market boils down to a single word—jobs. “If a sector will be hiring, it will be the Federal government,” he says. D.C. was also among the first markets to have a price correction. “Within a reasonable commute of the Capitol, homes have become very affordable and supply is constrained.”

2. San Diego, California “Most of the home builders and speculators have left town, and left a very supply-constrained market behind. The biotechnology sector is likely to lead an economic recovery that will be characterized by great affordability (by San Diego standards) and a lack of supply.”

3. Sacramento, California  “Although we expect housing demand in Sacramento to remain low due to state fiscal issues, much of the excess supply in both new and resale homes has been cleared out, and affordability is fantastic.”

4. Dallas, Texas “Assuming mortgage rates remain low and GSE lending doesn’t change, Dallas’ housing market should stabilize due to increased demand from people relocating from the west to one of the most affordable markets in the country. North Dallas should recover long before South Dallas.”

5. Denver, Colorado  “One of the best places to live in the country, Denver was just recovering from the telecom bust when it got hit by the national economic downturn as well. Housing is extremely affordable and foreclosure activity, which used to lead the country, is now much lower than most other areas of the country.”

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Tax Credit For Home Buyers Expands Home Buyer and Economic Activities

The newly expanded home buyer tax credit extends the $8,000 first-time buyer credit through April 30, 2010 and provides a new credit of up to $6,500 for repeat home buyers.

The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) is spreading the word to consumers about an important new law that extends and expands an attractive tax incentive for potential home buyers. The Worker, Homeownership, and Business Assistance Act of 2009, signed into law by President Obama on Nov. 6, extends the deadline for the first-time home buyer tax credit and gives a larger group of home buyers the chance to take advantage of this government program. “The tax credit has already proven to be an effective means of boosting economic activity,” said NAHB Chairman Joe Robson, a home builder from Tulsa, Oklahoma. “We hope that the government’s action to enhance it will have the intended additional stimulative effect that will help get housing and the economy back on solid ground.” The new law extends the $8,000 first-time home buyer credit through April 30, 2010, giving buyers who have signed a sales contract by that deadline until June 30 to close their deal. A new credit of up to $6,500 was created for repeat home buyers who buy a principle residence if they have been residing in the home they currently own (or previously owned) for five consecutive years out of the eight years preceding the purchase of the new home. “It’s not just a first-time buyer tax credit anymore,” Robson said. “Move-up buyers, move-down buyers, and others who have previously owned a home can now qualify as well. In fact, close to 70 percent of all potential home buyers should now qualify for some form of the credit.” Income limits for eligible buyers have also been increased to allow more consumers to qualify, particularly those in markets with a higher cost of living. Now single taxpayers with incomes up to $125,000 and married couples earning up to $225,000 may be eligible. Partial credits are available to home buyers who earn up to $20,000 more than the limits. A leading source of consumer information on the tax credit is NAHB’s Web site at www.federalhousingtaxcredit.com, which saw a huge increase in visits in the days after the new law was signed. It provides basic information about the first-time and repeat buyer credits, detailed question and answer sections, and links to additional home-buying resources for consumers. “The Federal Housing Tax Credit Web site had more than 70,000 visits on the Monday after the President enacted the law,” said Robson. “Since the site was established in mid-2008, there have been more than 6 million visits by people seeking information about the home buyer tax credits. That tells you how hungry consumers are for easy-to-understand information on this great opportunity that has been opened to them.” NAHB estimates that the home buyer tax credit will create 211,000 jobs and generate 180,000 additional home sales in the coming year. It is also expected to generate $9.6 billion in wage income and $6.9 billion in federal, state and local taxes.

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A First Article: For Men Everywhere

I finally wised up and created a blog in my own name, Scott Schaefer, instead of trying to be clever, thinking-up a catchy name with a deep meaning.  Most of those, as it turns out, have already been grabbed-up.  For the first article on my new blog, I am breaking with my own, albeit recent, tradition.  Instead of writing or posting an article chock full of important information or deep philosophical content.  Instead, my first article passes on an article from another author which was written, best I can tell, for men everywhere.  I felt compelled to share its wisdom.

Before I get started, I warn you now, there is no easy way for a man nearing 50 to impart wisdom learned on to the next generation. Still, as my father and grandfather did, I look at it as almost a duty, a carrying on of generations, if you will. As such, this story may be long, for there is no short way to teach.

About 2 months ago my nuts started hurting me. It wasn’t a sudden pain, just a gradual idea that my nuts hurt. Not a sharp pain, just a dull, continuous, ache. Being a man who believes in the wonders of modern medicine, I needed a doctor.

Now, I don’t know if you ever Googled “nut pain” but, I can tell you now, only about half of the search is related to medicine and doctors. The rest, the best I can tell, is related to walnuts, or chestnuts, or crazy people.

It turns out that I needed a gastro doctor, because apparently your nuts are somehow connected to your stomach…..go figure…..this whole thing is becoming a learning experience.

In order to spare you the details of a man grabbing my sack, let me just skip to telling you that I was diagnosed with hernias, “s” being the most important letter of that particular word in this specific case. Yes, hernias, one on each side, which has, the best I can tell when I cough, caused my balls to get sucked up into my stomach, which must be why I needed a gastro doctor to begin with. Again, the things a man can learn just by living long enough.

At this point, the story gets a bit personal, but it must be told. The doc asks me if I ever had any trouble with my “testicles“.  I hate that word, it’s like calling poontang a vagina, and was probably invented for people who didn’t want to talk about the subject to begin with, so they made up a word nobody wanted to say. Anyway, it turns out that I did, as a kid, have a problem with my left, uh………nut. From what I can remember of a child of 8 or 9, that sucker didn’t want to come down into the world with the right one.  It stayed hid up wherever nuts come from.

Now, I can’t remember the exact content of the conversation between my dad and the doc back then, but the gist of it was that the doc said that if they did not fix the hung up ball, I would most likely never have kids and was a great risk of…..uh……testicular cancer. The rest of the conversation surrounded the procedure, which included tying a string to my ball, and then pulling it down, and tying the other end of the string to my leg so that the unruly nut could be trained to stay with his partner. Of course, being only 8 or 9, I didn’t understand all of the terminology, but it was pretty damn clear, even at my tender age, that having one of your balls tied to your leg didn’t seem like something a boy could just run around with without tearing his nut off, or at the very least, a chunk of his leg. I can vividly remember watching my dad mull the whole thing over in his mind, before he said something along the line of, “we’ll go with no kids and cancer, thanks.”

It turned out, my wayward ball found his way home, at least partially, but I never really gave it much thought. If you think about it, a fellow don’t begin scratching and adjusting his balls until he’s a grown man. I can’t say I ever missed that thing, and didn’t even realize it worked things out on its own until I was old enough to barely remember it not being there. Besides, I went on to father 5 children so it never became part of a discussion again, until this damn gastro doctor brought it up. Now, I can’t say I was really paying attention to the next thing the doc told me, because after a man grabs your nuts, makes you cough, and

then puts his finger up next to those suckers until your eyes are about to pop out, your mind just shuts down. Apparently, your balls are connected to your stomach, but then they run straight into your eyeballs and into your brain. Who knew?

He said something about checking for cancer, and an ultrasound. I said, “huh?”. He said, “I’ll set you up for a testicular ultrasound before we talk about surgery, to make sure there are no issues we can’t see.” I can honestly say, without hesitation, that testicular ultrasound are two words I didn’t even know you could put together. That’s something you expect to read in a headline in the morning paper, something like, The Israeli’s are massing troops on the border after learning that Iran has a secret testicular ultrasound plant.

“Uh…how’s that go?”

He explained that it was like an x-ray, only it gave a real time 3 dimensional picture of what your balls look like. Whatever?

The doc says, “you may want to shave your groin area, it’ll save some time when you go in for the appointment with the ultrasound tech.” Well hell, my day is just getting better and better. The Best I can figure when I leave there is that my nuts are in my stomach, they may be ate up with cancer, and

now they need to suffer the indignation of being hairless. Yes, I’ve heard that some of you younger dudes shave your nuts…..that’s great….you’re stupid. I can prove you’re stupid because I shaved mine 2 days before the ultrasound, and by day two it felt like a porcupine had taken up residence in my shorts. Why anyone would do that to themselves for the hell of it I don’t know, and don’t tell me that the women like it…..who gives a fork what they like. Which, unfortunately, brings me to the lesson part of this story.

I go to the “imaging center” with my shaved balls, which are not really shaved because they now reside in my stomach, just behind my eyeballs. I go through registration and eventually get taken to the exam room, where I sit, waiting……….waiting………waiting…..until , in walks Carla.

Long dark hair and about 30 years old, not a knock out, but a fairly good looking gal. I figure she’s about ask me some more questions and then the tech dude will come in and get this over with. But then Carla says, “I need you to lay down on the table. It’s up to you, some men take all of their clothes off, some just their pants, and some just pull their pants down a ways. It’s up to you, I’ll leave the room, you can cover up with the sheet, and then I’ll be back and we’ll get started.” I say, “WHAT? Who’s doing this deal?”

Carla says, “I am the tech, don’t worry about it, it’s painless.” I refrain from saying, “yes, I know it’s painless, in fact, I usually like to have some gal rubbing my nuts.”

So Carla leaves and I sit there pondering my three options. I wonder for a bit why there ain’t option 4, “just pull one of your balls through your zipper and we’ll get some pictures”, but there ain’t. I opt for just taking

my pants off, because laying there with my pants around my ankles seems dangerous if I decide I need to get out of there in a hurry.

So here comes Carla, and I’m laying there like a goof with a sheet over me….wondering just how this is supposed to work…..and then Carla gets a tube of jelly and starts rubbing it in her hands. She pulls the sheet down and begins to rub the jelly on my balls. In a near panic, I realize that I better think of something I hate, and fast. For the life of me, the only thing that comes to my head is cauliflower….I hate that crap!!! I don’t know how anyone eats it.

Carla is rubbing my nuts and I’m like an Arab chanting at the wailing wall…..cauliflower, cauliflower, cauliflower….. she’s talking to me, but I got my hand over my eyes….cauliflower, cauliflower, cauliflower. She grabs a towel an puts it over my johnson, touching it a bit as she does….CALIFLOWER, CALIFLOWER, CALIFLOWER….this is about get ugly and embarrassing.

Next thing I know, she says, “this may tickle a bit.”   “WHOA……HOLD ON A MINUTE”. She ignores me and starts to run that damn vibrating ultrasonic pecker hardener on my balls…..OH DAMN, CALIFLOWER!!!!!!

I’m still hiding my eyes and now I’m trying not to laugh, and the chant must be coming out of me because Carla says, “what?”…..I have no idea what to say, so I blurt out, “you like cauliflower?” She says, “not really, what brought that up?” I can’t talk…….and then she says, “your right testicle is a bit larger then your left testicle.”  How the hell do you respond to something like that, when the person who says it is a gal with a vibrator in her hand?  “Uh, thanks” I mumble. She laughs…..cauliflower, cauliflower, cauliflower….and I’ve about got tears in my eyes trying to figure out when this deal will end.

But no……more jelly, and on up toward the top of my balls…..I now envision entire fields of cauliflower, and people with cauliflower heads, and God help me, I can feel it coming. I says, “Uh”….and Carla says….I swear to God this Fox says, “don’t worry if you get a bit aroused, it means all the parts are working.” You think?

I’m pretty sure at some point I just passed out……and when I woke up Carla was telling me I was clear…..no cancer……and I was thinking like my dad did 40 years ago, hell, I’d of just took the cancer if I’d have known where this whole deal was going.

The lesson? There isn’t one.  I lied.  There is no lesson, it’s just life.

          Author Unknown.  But I give the man all the credit.

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