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
- Commercial Real Estate: 'Ticking Time Bomb'
- Bank-owned Inventory: Move it!
- Realities of the New Obama Refis
- A Bigger Housing Bailout for Obama
- Home Prices: Are We There Yet?
- Treasury: Jingle Mail A Myth
- How Bad Is The Housing Market? One Man's Tale
- Appraisal Code Sparks Huge Response
- New Rules on Home Appraisals End Up Thwarting Many Sales
- Mortgage Bankers Slash 2009 Forecasts
|
CNBC'S MOST SHARED
- Apartment Vacancy Rate Hits 22-Year High
- Investing in Tech Now
- New Jobless Claims Plunge; Continuing Claims Hit Record
- Citigroup Replaces CFO, Shakes Up Top Management
- What You'll See On My NASCAR Documentary Tonight
- Warren Buffett: Economy Needs Another Dose of Viagra
- Warren Buffett Tells CNBC Consumer Sales Remain "Very, Very Soft"
- Cramer?s Outrage
- Klutzy Woz Becomes Auto Body Pitchman
- Video Game Makers Finding Gold in Old Titles
- July 10th in Market History
- Microsoft Plays a Game of Bing Pong
- Options Smell 'Blood' on Infosys
- Christmas in July: Consumers To Out-Scrooge Scrooge
- GM's Second Chance
- Art Cashin: Traders Weigh Obama Policy Changes
- Warren Buffett: Economy Needs Another Dose of Viagra
- Commercial Real Estate: 'Ticking Time Bomb'
- Will LeBron Dunk Tape Ever Be Released?
- Stimulus Critics Put Obama, Democrats on Defensive
- Warren Buffett: Consumer Sales Remain 'Very, Very Soft'
- Busch: Chinese Bank Announces Bombshell
- Lenny Dykstra Claims 'Bank Fraud' Caused Bankruptcy
- Christmas in July: Consumers to Out-Scrooge Scrooge
- Software Giants Rush to Cash In on Carbon-Trading
- Video Game Makers Finding Gold in Old Titles
- The 15 Highest Grossing Movies of All Time
- Cerberus Won't Let Investors Out of Hedge Fund: Report
RSS FEED
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