Builder Confidence Holds Steady in August
Anticipating positive impacts of newly enacted housing stimulus legislation, single-family home builders registered some improvement in their outlook for home sales in the next six months, according to the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index (HMI) for August, released today. The overall confidence measure held even this month at 16, while the component gauging sales expectations rose two points to 25. "With the passage of crucial housing legislation last month that created an attractive home buyer tax credit, there is a sense that home sales may soon be reaching a turning point," noted NAHB President Sandy Dunn, a home builder from Point Pleasant, W.Va. "Builders are anticipating the stimulative effects of this legislation and are optimistic that the tax credit will give those buyers who've been sitting on the fence the reason they need to jump back into the market."
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The Desert and Green Power: A Love Triangle
April Sall is a keeper of the Mojave Desert and its mountains, tending a private conservancy in the same canyon where her grandmother homesteaded in the 1920s. Once considered wasteland, this expanse of sunshine and wind is now a prized battleground between unlikely opponents. For generations, conservationists like Sall's family have guarded the landscape, but 21st Century demands for renewable energy are threatening to crash into the pristine desert, now deemed a gold mine for solar, wind and geothermal farms.
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Pick Your Spots When Planning to Remodel
A funny thing happens when housing news is discouraging: Owners treat their homes with more tender loving care. "When housing is booming, if your water heater isn't working well or if your garage is too tight, you say, 'Well, maybe we'll move, and we'll get a good price without fixing these,' " says economist Bernard Markstein of the National Association of Home Builders. "But now people say, 'We should really do something about that water heater or garage.' " Regular maintenance invariably makes financial sense, experts agree, because deferring work can drag down home values and create bigger repair bills.
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Builders Finding Strong Home Buyer Interest in Tax Credit
In the early weeks following enactment of a $7,500 tax credit for first-time home buyers, builders and home builders associations across the country have been moving quickly to promote the new financial benefit and spur sales in their local markets. Centex, whose business specializes in first-time home buyers, reported encouraging results from a survey of 25- to 65-year-olds who had not owned a home in the past three years. Seventy-five percent of those responding said they thought that the home-buyer tax assistance effort was a good idea, and more than half said they were likely to buy a home with the availability of the credit.
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Builders Continue to Rein-In New Housing Production in July
Single-family home builders continued to practice aggressive inventory management in July by slowing the pace of new production nearly 3 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 641,000 units, according to Commerce Department figures released today. This was the lowest rate of single-family housing starts since January 1991. "Though some may be inclined to focus only on the negative angle of this report, there is definitely a bright side," said Sandy Dunn, president of the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) and a home builder from Point Pleasant, W.Va. "The actions that home builders are taking right now to keep a lid on new production are slowly but surely helping to bring supply and demand back into balance and put us on the road to a much healthier housing market."
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Falling Home Prices: The Silver Lining
Home prices continue to tumble across the country, making homes more affordable in most U.S. cities, according to a new report released Tuesday. Nationally, 55% of homes sold from April through June were affordable to families earning the U.S. median income of $61,500, according to a quarterly report released Tuesday by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB). That's up from 53.8% in the first quarter of 2008, and the most affordable home prices have been since the second quarter of 2004.
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Foreclosures Distort Housing Data
As if the housing market wasn't scary enough, the record-setting surge in foreclosures could be distorting some of the closely watched housing data used to gauge the market's health. The foreclosure glut is making listings of homes for sale a less reliable indicator, because much of the distressed inventory might be left out. In addition, fire-sale prices for such properties may also be skewing volume figures. Some real estate analysts say this may indicate that housing conditions are worse than they now look, dampening hopes that the troubled market could soon be bottoming out.
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Big Green Apple: Mayor Says Answer to Energy Needs is Blowin' in Wind
Windmills atop the Brooklyn Bridge. Green power in Fresh Kills. The Statue of Liberty's torch powered by an ocean windfarm. That's the vision for a green revolution Mayor Bloomberg laid out in a speech at the National Clean Energy Summit on Tuesday night. "Perhaps companies will want to put wind turbines atop bridges and skyscrapers, or use the enormous potential of powerful off-shore winds miles out off the Atlantic Coast, where turbines could generate roughly twice the energy," Bloomberg told the summit.
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DOE to Invest Up To $24 Million for Breakthrough Solar Energy Products
U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy John Mizroch announced recently that DOE will invest up to $24M in Fiscal Year 2008 and beyond, subject to the availability of funds to develop solar energy products to significantly accelerate penetration of solar photovoltaic (PV) systems in the United States. The Solar Energy Grid Integration Systems (SEGIS) projects will provide critical research and development (R&D) funding to develop less expensive, higher performing products to enhance the value of solar PV systems to homeowners and business owners.
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America's Bigger-Is-Better Attitude Toward Housing May Be Shifting
Mendy Fisher had the 3,000- square-foot house in the Cincinnati suburbs, where sprawling housing developments meet farmland. He had the screened-in porch, the four bedrooms, the ponds, the geese, the clubhouse. He also had high heating costs and atrocious traffic. And he had to beg friends to come visit Loveland, Ohio. "Even our kids," he says. Mr. Fisher, 62, and his wife, Ginny, 59, recently traded in all that space for less than half the square footage in Deer Park, Ohio, a little closer to downtown Cincinnati. It's a neighborhood that feels like one, Mr. Fisher says, where people walk their dogs in the evenings and where his drive to the synagogue takes mere minutes.
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