Housing Starts
Housing starts for the month of October declined 10.6% from September at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 529,000. Starts are down 30.7% year over year. October was the worst month for housing starts since April.
Many analysts attribute the sudden decline to the delayed extension of the tax break for first time home buyers ($8000).
MBA Applications
In addition, the Mortgage Bankers association announced that applications declined 4.7% for the week ended November 13th.
Poor economic data is ubiquitous at the moment.
Thanks for the update, its most appreciated as time is so precious these days.
ReplyDeleteI just want to point out that housing/mortgage data is key to Fed Policy since any firming will them more leeway to do what they want naturally pending on inflation.
(as we discussed about inflation during our last meeting).
As is, this only fuels the the fire of the QE program and low rates... Bernake is all talk and no action. He's trying to play down the affects of a weaker dollar... yeeeaahhh rightt....
When will these darn fundamentals converge with the broader markets? It will probably be sparked by CRE in the financial sector when we see huge write downs in the 4th quarter. So i guess the key is to watch expectations? Lets get those sentiment indicators rollin!