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
- Shadow Inventory Dwarfs Loan Mods
- The Battered Businesses Behind Housing
- Watch Foreclosures, Seriously
- Home Buyer Tax Credit Expansion Heads to Obama
- Congratulations America, We're All Landlords Now
- Wells Fargo Bets on Housing Recovery
- Home Buyer Tax Credit Done: Does it Matter?
- Better Times for Mortgage Banking
- 'Beleaguered Big Builders' Sitting On Piles of Cash
- Home Buyer Tax Credit: Final Deal?
MOST SHARED
- Herbalife Vs. Hedge Funds
- Apple Surpasses Nokia as Top Cellphone Maker by Profits
- Gold Heading to $1150: Art Hogan
- Cramer Jeers J&J, Applauds Abbott
- Adobe Cuts 680 Jobs, to Take Charge
- Toll Brothers: More Contracts Signed, but Sales Down
- JPMorgan Chase to Hire 1,200 Mortgage Officers
- US Becomes Top Country Brand Under Obama: Survey
- SingTel Posts Higher Quarterly Profit, Cautious on Growth
- Beware of 'Trampling Effect' When Market Tops: Manager
- Gold Heading to $1150: Art Hogan
- Starbucks Brews Up Growth
- Farr: An Extended Period—No Fat Lady in Sight
- More Upside if S&P Passes This Number: Market Pro
- Murdoch Lashes Out At Google
- Fighting The Flu Vaccine Critics
- Nov. 10: Unusual Volume Leaders
- Shadow Inventory Dwarfs Loan Mods
- Retail Earnings in Focus Ahead of Shopping Season
- Apple Surpasses Nokia as Top Handset Maker by Profit
- In This Relay-Race Market, Who Gets Baton Next?
- Workers Staying Put at Their Jobs as Jobless Surges
- Three Things the US Can Do To Stop the Dollar's Decline
- Toll Brothers: More Contracts Signed, but Sales Down
- Ponzi Proceeds: Bidding on Madoff's Toys
- Bear Stearn Fund Managers Not Guilty on All Counts
- Commodity ETFs: Returns May Not Match Expectations
RSS FEED
Realty Check
Text Size 
 |
CNBC.com |
Fiscal third quarter losses for the nation’s largest public home builder came in at $399 million or $1.26 per share. But compare that to $823.8 million or $2.62 per share for the same quarter a year ago.
That might lead one to say: Hey, maybe the bleeding is ebbing? Well, you have to dig a bit deeper into the numbers. The losses stem mostly from inventory impairments and land write-offs. In English, that means the value of their properties are falling and they’re having to walk away from land that they can’t use because nobody is going to buy the house they would put on it. Those numbers all end up on the books as impairments, and they did come way down in the third quarter, but the reason why doesn’t offer much hope.
“The losses are more a function of the impairments now which are lessening as the companies have less land on their books at this point,” says Credit Suisse analyst Daniel Oppenheim.
The big builder is getting smaller with less inventory, fewer homes to build and fewer customers to whom to sell. Think about it; the big public builders have already written off about 60 percent of their book values.
So yes, the losses are smaller, but only because the companies are now smaller. And they continue to shrink. Oppenheim expects new home permits to continue to fall with a bottom in the market perhaps in 2009. And most expect that the new home industry will bump along the bottom for a while, instead of a quick U-turn back up.
Video: It's been a year since the credit bubble really accelerated the housing slowdown, but with home prices tumbling in most areas, are we really in a buyer's market?
Questions? Comments?
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes