Home Prices Continue Down Nine Cities Hit New Lows
Posted: 27 January, 2011 Filed under: Demographics, Economy, Housing, Recession | Tags: Economy, Housing, housing market, housing prices, real estate, real estate market, recession 1 Comment »Data through November 2010, released January 25 by Standard & Poor’s for its S&P/Case-Shiller Home Price Index, the leading measure of US home prices, show a deceleration in the annual growth rates in 17 of the 20 Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) and the 10- and 20-City Composites compared to what was reported for October. The 10-City Composite was down 0.4% and the 20-City Composite fell 1.6% from November 2009 levels. Read the rest of this entry »
Real-Time Housing Market Update December 2010
Posted: 30 December, 2010 Filed under: Economy, Housing, Recession | Tags: economics, Economy, housing market, lexington luxury builders Leave a comment »
December 2010 Overview
The December housing market begins with a continuation of the seasonal price and inventory declines, with asking prices down by 0.45% this month and active inventory down by 3.16%. In November 2010, the Altos 10-City Price Composite continued its seasonal decline by 0.45%. Expect weekly declines in price, inventory and demand through the end of the year. Watch the third week of January before the first inklings of seasonal demand uptick become visible. Read the rest of this entry »
Last Minute Break Right For Independents
Posted: 2 November, 2010 Filed under: Housing, Mid Term Election, Politics, Tea Party | Tags: congressional elections, democrats, house, independent, independent voters, independents, obama, polls, republicans, senate, Tea Party Leave a comment »The Democrats’ final push to woo undecided voters fizzled, putting dozens of Congressional races beyond reach and destroying the Democrats chances in at least four toss-up Senate seats. That is, at least, according to Democratic strategists and party officials.
Independents, a crucial swing bloc, hell this year they are The swing bloc, are breaking sharply for Republicans in the final days of the campaign. New polls released this morning show swings of as much as 14 points in the last week.
Stuart Rothenberg, a nonpartisan pollster, said Friday he thought the Republicans could pick up as many as 70 House seats. This, my fellow patriotic Americans, is a beat down which has not been accomplished since 1948.
Republicans must pick up 39 seats to seize control of the House of Representatives. This outcome, I guaranty, is now a forgone conclusion. By this time tomorrow, Republicans will be contemplating who among them will be the next Speaker of the House.
The eleventh hour free fall in Democratic support among independents is also keeping alive the GOP’s longer-shot hopes of taking the Senate.
Obama has been campaigning strong, in the style which is uniquely his. The deep baritone chant which blames Bush, blames Republicans and claims that Republicans are undermining the voting process by trying to buy the vote. He has really beaten this drum for weeks. The problem for Obama, is that, like the fabled emperor, he has no clothes. In short, American voters now see him as the liar he is.
On Obama’s claim that Republicans are trying to buy the vote, the truth is that Democrats have outspent Republicans in this election cycle by more than $400,000,000. The President, as is his custom, is lying.
Democratic strategists acknowledge their biggest problem is the frustration being expressed by swing voters with Obama. They are – privately – very concerned with voter disenchantment on the 2012 elections, especially since Obama is the source of this disenchantment.
Independents are voting against Democrats because of Obama and the more he campaigns for Democratic candidates, the more he seals their fate. Democrats are being called ‘Obama liberals,’ and the strategy is proving very effective.
Nationally, independent voters, who backed Democrats in 2006 and 2008, have swung to the GOP. In the latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll, 52% said they would vote Republican this time. Obama, who won 52% of independents in 2008, now enjoys just 40% support among that group.
With enthusiasm rising on the right, and free falling on the left, no Democrat is completely safe.
ebbing on the left, Democratic candidates needed this year to win over even more independent voters than Mr. Obama did in 2008, strategists said. Candidates who have been banking on making up this ground in the closing days have instead seen independent voters flocking to the GOP.
For example, Rick Boucher of Virginia, who has comfortably held his seat for 14 terms, has suffered a sharp drop in support among independents. Just a month ago, polls showed him up by more than 12 points over his opponent. That race is now too close to call. The reason: Boucher’s ties to Obama.
Another Democrat, this one from Rhode Island, told Obama to “Shove it” the other day. I prognosticated this very phenomenon some months ago, saying that Democrats would cannibalize themselves while trying to keep their jobs in my article XXXX.
In Pennsylvania, where Obama won independents by 19 points, Republican Senate Pat Toomey has a 13 point lead over Democrat Joe Sestak among independents. Democrats say the trouble for Sestak among independents could pose less of a challenge than in other Senate races, as Democrats hold a 1.2 million-voter edge in party registration in Pennsylvania, while only about one in 10 voters there is unaligned with the major parties. Blah, blah, blah. The talking heads can explain it away how they will, but the fact remains: the Pennsylvania Senate race is going Republican.
In Mr. Obama’s home state of Illinois, Republican Senate candidate Mark Kirk has moved in the polls from winning 38% of independents to now winning half of them. Kirk is in a dead heat with Obama’s man, Democrat Alexi Giannoulias. Apparently, even Illinois can get worn out by crooks.
Tad Devine, a Democratic consultant who served as a senior adviser to the presidential campaigns of Al Gore and John Kerry, said the trend was striking this year. “They are behaving like Republicans,” Mr. Devine said of independent voters.
No, Mr. Devine, they are behaving like Americans.
Housing Affordability: Report and Analysis on the Most Affordable Housing Markets in America
Posted: 4 March, 2010 Filed under: Housing | Tags: dallas housing market, Housing, housing affordability, housing market, lexington luxury builders, lexington park plano, plano housing market, Scott Schaefer Comments OffIndianapolis followed by Detroit/Dearborn, Michigan; Dayton and Youngstown, Ohio; and Akron, Ohio top the list of the most affordable housing markets in America, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index which was released February 19, 2010. Nationwide housing affordability, bolstered by favorable interest rates and housing prices which have been beaten way down, ended the year near its highest level ever. At year end 2009, the Housing Opportunity Index showed that:
- 70.8% of all homes sold in the final quarter of 2009 were affordable to families earning the national median income of $64,000.
- Affordability was slightly higher than in the previous quarter.
- Affordability was near the record-high of 72.5% set during the first quarter of 2009.
- Affordability during 4th Quarter 2009 was up from 62.4% during the fourth quarter of 2008.
New Study Debunks The Myths Surrounding the Trend To Buy Green
Posted: 16 December, 2009 Filed under: Cap & Trade, Climate Change, Housing | Tags: al gore, cap and trade, Climate Change, global warming, global warming myths, green building, green living, lexington luxury builders, lexington park plano, nahb green, Scott Schaefer 4 Comments »
The recently released Green Pulse Study shatters stereotypes of who Green Consumers really are and of what actually motivates them to buy green. Results may surprise
A new national study of green consumers conducted by the Knoxville, Tennessee based Shelton Group, the results of which were released August 21, 2009 contradicts several long-held stereotypes about them. The Green Living Pulse study, which polled 1,007 US consumers who at least occasionally buy green products (77% of the population) found there is no typical Green Consumer. Further findings revealed that the environment is not their top concern, their kids are not influencing them to be green, and, while many of them know what they should do to save the planet, they often don’t do it.
“Most green advertising is created as if there’s one pool of green consumers and they’re all motivated by ‘Save the planet!’ messages,” says Suzanne Shelton, whose firm conducted the study. “Not all green consumers are the same, they’re not all motivated by the same messages, and they’re not all inclined to buy only green products.”
The study also uncovered six myths about this group:
Myth 1: Green consumers’ top concern is the environment. When asked to identify their top concern, the economy, by far, is No. 1 (with 59% calling it their top concern) and the environment falls far behind at 8%).
Myth 2: Green consumers’ main motivation when reducing their energy use is to save the planet. When asked the most important reason to reduce energy consumption, 73% chose “to reduce my bills/control costs” and only 26% chose “to lessen my impact on the environment.”
Myth 3: Green consumers are all-knowledgeable about environmental issues. For example, the survey asked, “From what you have read or heard about CO2 (carbon dioxide), please place a check beside any of the following statements you think are true.” Almost half (49%) chose the incorrect answer, “It depletes the ozone layer.” This is not surprising since Al Gore, godfather of the green movement, frequently gets his facts wrong.
Myth 4: Green consumers fall into a simple demographic profile. While the study detected some demographic tendencies, it found that green consumers aren’t easily defined by their age, income, or ethnicity.
Myth 5: Children play a big part in influencing their parents to be green. Only 20% of respondents with children said their kids encouraged them to be greener. Children have virtually no influence, even for seemingly easy ways to go green, like promoting recycling and turning off lights.
Myth 6: If buyers just knew the facts they’d make greener choices. Hold on buckaroo, the study showed that knowledge does not translate into eco-conscious behavior. Individuals who answered all of the science-related questions correctly did report participating in a significantly higher average number of green activities, such as driving a fuel-efficient car or lowering their thermostat during the winter; however, the 25-34 year-old age group consistently answered the questions correctly, yet, on average, this group’s green activity levels were lower than those of older respondents.
In reality, politicians from the left use Global Warming and the associated save the planet argument to further their own agenda, an agenda which isn’t necessarily even green. Al Gore, to continue with a previous example, grossly misrepresents scientific facts in order to convince the world to go green. It doesn’t take much digging, however, to uncover Gore’s self serving misrepresentations to find that he does so in order to profit personally from the discussion. Gore is well on his way to making a billion dollars from the green argument.
Consumers, it turns out, have assessed the green movement correctly. They buy green when they perceive a personal benefit from doing so, not to further some nebulous altuistic, yet faulty, save the planet movement.
I am a Certified Green Building Professional, which means I have received specialized training and education to earn this certification. And, I believe, fervently, in the green building movement. Although it seems as if the positions I advance in this article results in my contradicting myself when I encourage home buyers to buy green, that couldn’t be further from the truth.
In my next article I’ll impart a good deal of common sense and will prove – absolutely – that buying green built homes is the smart and right thing to do. But saving the polar bears and polar ice caps won’t enter into my argument. Be sure to read my next article. My science, unlike that of Al Gore, is neither closed nor wrong.
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Housing Market Experts Predict the Housing Markets That Will Recover First
Posted: 20 November, 2009 Filed under: Housing | Tags: dallas housing market, economics, Economy, housing market, housing market rebound, plano housing market Comments Off
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
Posted: 19 November, 2009 Filed under: Housing | Tags: dallas housing market, economics, Economy, home buyers, homebuyer tax credit, housing market, lexington luxury builders, lexington park at rice field, lexington park plano, new homes, plano housing market, Scott Schaefer Comments OffThe 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.
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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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