Good News… Housing Starts Down

Money CNN details:

Initial construction of U.S. homes edged lower in July following a surge in the previous month, according to government figures released Tuesday. The report had some modest indications of stabilization. "A mixed bag this time around," said Mike Larson, real estate and interest rate analyst at Weiss Research, in a research note.

Housing starts fell to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 581,000, down 1% from a revised 587,000 in June, the Commerce Department said. Economists were expecting housing starts to increase to an annual rate of 599,000 units, according to a consensus estimate gathered by Briefing.com.

THIS IS A GOOD THING…. Why? Let’s go to David Rosenberg.

With every 1 in 8 Americans with a mortgage either in arrears or in the foreclosure process; 1 in 4 homeowners “upside down” on their mortgage; 1 in 6 either unemployed or underemployed; and 1 in every 7 housing unit in the United States sitting vacant right now, it will be interesting to see exactly what sort of recovery we end up with. These numbers we just cited are straight out of the twilight zone.

In other words, why build something we don’t need? The lower the level of housing starts, the faster we work off this excess inventory.

Source: Census