Current Housing Indicators |
| CURRENT | PREVIOUS | ||
| Existing Home Sales | 4.49m | ▼ | 4.74m |
| New Home Sales | 309,000 | ▼ | 344,000 |
| Housing Starts | 583,000 | ▲ | 477,000 |
| Building Permits | 547,000 | ▲ | 531,000 |
| HMI | 9 | UNCH | 9 |
| Existing Home Prices | $170,300 | ▼ (annually) | $199,800 |
| New Home Prices | $201,100 | ▼ (annually) | $232,400 |
More Videos
- Treasury On Mortgage Modifications
- Citi Mortgage Reveals What Treasury Won't
- Investors May Skew Housing Reality
- 100% Mortgage Financing From USDA
- Despite Government Aid, Foreclosure Crisis is Not Improving
- Housing Data Delivers Mixed Messages
- Appraisals Now Center Stage in Housing Recovery
- Underwater Mortgages Could Sink Even Deeper
- First Time Buyers Rescue Housing: Realtors
- Housing Recovery 'Still In Uncharted Territory': HUD Secretary
MOST SHARED
- Tiger Woods Out of Hospital After Accident
- The Good Entrepreneur Winner
- Gold Will Collapse Like Oil Did in 2008: Charts
- Abu Dhabi Will Aid Debt-Fraught Dubai 'Case by Case'
- Next Week: Cash In Now Or Wait For A Santa Rally?
- Halftime Report: Dubai - First Ripple Of Larger Crisis?
- CNBC VIDEO: Warren Buffett & Bill Gates 'Walk & Talk' at Columbia University
- U.S. Stocks Fall on Dubai Worries
- Black Friday at Best Buy
- Strategists on Dubai: Avoid 'Rash Moves' Now
- Longer Lines, Fuller Carts This Black Friday
- Dubai Stock Market Fear Has 'Legs': Dennis Gartman
- Obama's Emission Reduction Pledge Paints Future for Autos
- Is Super Bowl Halftime Act Too Old?
- Surprising Options Trades in TiVo Shares
- EA Sports Hopes to Pump Up Sales Through Pop-Up Locations
- Abu Dhabi Will Aid Debt-Fraught Dubai 'Case by Case'
- Banks With The Biggest Exposure to The UAE
- Dubai's Debt Woes Signal New Era for Creditors
- Next Week: Cash In Now Or Wait For A Santa Rally?
- Dubai Stock Selloff May Bring Buying Opportunity
- Longer Lines, Fuller Carts This Black Friday
- Big US Banks May Be Forced to Raise Capital: Bove
- Bank of America Amends Pay for Senior Executives
- Tiger Woods Out of Hospital After Accident
RSS FEED
Realty Check
Text Size 
 |
Suddenly it occurred to me that one group of retailers was conspicuously absent: America’s big home builders. I’m on all their mailing lists.
I logged onto each of the top 10 builders' Web sites. Eight out of the 10 sites' home pages made no reference whatsoever to the holiday season.
One site, KB Home [KBH
Loading...
()
] , had all kinds of holiday activities, gift suggestions, holiday word find, printable nutcracker coloring pages, and even some scrumptious-sounding dessert recipes -- but really nothing on actual homes. You have to click on that category up top, “Find,” in order to see houses.
Only Beazer Homes [BZH
Loading...
()
] had a tasteful line on its home page: “Year-end Pricing on Move-in Ready Homes.”
I have to wonder why the builders aren’t jumping on the holiday season bandwagon. Lackluster sales everywhere else are spurring massive price cuts. Is it that the builders have cut as much as they can already? All autumn, we saw sale after sale, including some that sliced hundreds of thousands of dollars off the base sticker price.
All I can surmise is: perhaps it’s not about price anymore.
A mid-sized home builder, speaking off the record to a friend of mine (why is it that all my friends and family now have to tell me everything they hear about the housing market?? I have other interests, you know!), said that potential buyers right now don’t care how low the prices are, they simply can’t bring themselves to make the deal.
Unlike previous housing recessions, when builders would work with the buyers’ budgets to figure out what kind of homes they could afford, the builders are now finding that the main barrier to sale is not price or budget. Instead, it is an overwhelming sense among consumers that homes are fundamentally a bad investment right now.
Questions? Comments?
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes