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housing stimulus: The White House As An Economic News Source? - 06/22/09 03:43 PM
According to Reuters, Robert Gibbs, the White House press secretary said today, "I think the president has said this, and I would certainly say this, I think you're likely to see unemployment at 10 percent within the next couple of months."
Yeah, like NEXT month.
Thank you Captain Obvious.
That would have been great information to consider several months ago when you projected a peak unemployment rate of 8%, a number that you have based a lot of your economic and housing "stimulus" projections off of.
Currently the advertised unemployment rate sits at 9.4% in May, in April it was 8.9%. There is a … (9 comments)
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housing stimulus: Senator Isakson's Proposed $15,000 Tax Credit: Digging and Filling Ditches - 06/20/09 04:02 PM
Back in February, Senator Isakson, a former real estate broker, was the prime sponsor of a proposed $15,000 home buying tax credit that was eventually shot down in favor of the current $8,000 first time home buyer tax credit.
Isakson was quoted in February as saying, "We do have a history in this country with housing and it goes back to the crash of 1974, which actually in terms of inventory and price declines was comparable to what's happening now." We won't get caught up on the details, but clearly 1974 is not 2009.
Well, the old idea of the $15,000 tax … (4 comments)
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housing stimulus: Yes, The Stimulus Package Is Too Small - 06/17/09 01:41 PM
This blog is in response to Jed Smith's feature post questioning whether or not the government's stimulus package was too small.
Mr. Smith recently wrote a really informative post about how to calculate the needs for a stimulus package based on Okun's Law and the GDP multiplier and how they are related to GDP and unemployment.
He arrives at the conclusion that, "The application of Okun's law suggests that the current Spending Bill is having less of an impact than is desirable." And that, "Therefore, a simple quick calculation suggests that the stimulus may be too small."
I don't disagree with any … (9 comments)
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housing stimulus: Housing Starts Bounce Off Their Record Low In May - 06/16/09 09:35 AM
According to the Census Bureau, housing starts jumped 17.2% in May from their record low in April.
While this is a good indication for the housing sector, it is worth noting that the month over month improvement was driven by starts for 5 units or more which were up 77.1% from the previous month. Unfortunately, the problem facing the housing market is not the 5-unit properties, it is the single family home market.
Single family housing starts were up 7.5% from the previous month but were still down -40.9% from the previous year, and 2008 was a really bad year in and … (4 comments)
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housing stimulus: Falling Home Prices Are Not A Housing Stimulus - 06/01/09 11:11 AM
According to a report put out by the National Association of REALTORS, home sales are down in 45 states (including the District of Columbia) on a year over year basis from the first quarter of 2008 to the first quarter of 2009.
Only six states showed increases in home sales this pat year, you can probably guess four of them; California (80.6%), Florida (25%), Arizona (50.2%), and Nevada (116.8%). The other two were Minnesota (11.9%) and Virginia (12.2%).
Regionally, home sales were down in the Northeast by -20.1%, the Midwest by -13.1%, and the South by -12.7%. Home sales were up in the West … (9 comments)
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housing stimulus: But It's All About Credit, Right? - 05/04/09 06:41 PM
How many times have we heard either politicians, talking heads, or CEOs say, "we need to get credit moving again"?
As I have written about before the accepted philosophy has been that once we fixed the banking system and gave the banks enough capital, or guaranteed enough of their loans, or when we removed the toxic assets (all at the cost of the tax payer of course), that the banks will start lending again, the economy will turn around, and as Clark Griswold said in Vacation, we'll all be whistlin' Zip-a-dee-do-dah out of our you know whats as we skipped to work each day.
Well, we have … (6 comments)
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housing stimulus: Federal Tax Revenues Down Sharply - 04/19/09 03:53 PM
According to a CNNMoney.com article, income is down not just for the American people and small businesses, but tax revenues are also down sharply for the Federal Government.
According to the article, all told, tax revenues are down 14% from last year, in other words, "Washington has $160 billion less to spend today than it did a year ago." And yet despite this, "the country's spending levels midway through the fiscal year rose by $480 billion, or 33 percent, compared to last March.
Additionally, "individual income tax receipts dropped 15% while those for businesses fell a whopping 57%."
And then the mother-load statistic of … (25 comments)
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housing stimulus: The homeownership predicament - 02/16/09 03:26 PM
The problem with Congress' stimulus and bailout efforts to increase homeownership rates through a new $8,000 tax credit while at the same time attempting to maintain the dream of homeowenrship by subsidizing mortgage payments is that they are overlooking a big part of the housing market, the non-owner occupied market.
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, in the second quarter of 2008 only 58% of the housing units in the United States are owner occupied. In other words, approximately 42% of the homes in the United States are either held for investment, vacation, or are vacant. Assuming you own the home you are living in, take a look … (2 comments)
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housing stimulus: Can there be an economic stimulus if there isn't a housing stimulus? - 02/13/09 01:46 PM
In light of Congress fumbling their latest effort to incorporate a meaningful housing stimulus into the broader economic stimulus, it begs the question, can there really be an economic stimulus if there isn't a housing stimulus or housing market stability?
I think its a fair question considering Washington is putting tax payers on the hook for nearly $800 billion.
If Americans are losing their homes, and if home values are eroding like an artificial levee during a 100-year flood, are Americans going to spend money and pump money into the economy?
If Americans aren't spending, can there be any meaningful job creation or job security?
… (1 comments)
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housing stimulus: And you wonder why Americans aren't buying homes? - 02/06/09 06:29 PM
The Bureau of Labor Statistics announced the January unemployment and it wasn't pretty, and no I'm not talking about the 7.6% unemployment rate that you see the media reporting about, I'm talking about the 13.9% unemployment rate that nobody wants to acknowledge.
This is the rate that accounts for people that are unemployed, are not looking for work, but have in the past and still want a job. It also accounts for discouraged workers who gave a job market reason for not looking for a job currently. And finally, those that are employed part time but want full time work. … (3 comments)
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housing stimulus: The unemployment rate, housing stimulus, and a housing recovery - 01/12/09 04:35 PM
I have written a couple of times about the "real" unemployment rate and how it is worse than the numbers that are being reported by the mainstream media. Specifically, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the U-6 unemployment number for December of 2008 is 13.2% compared to the reported U-3 number which is 7.2%.
The reason unemployment matters is because as Americans lose jobs, not only are fewer people going to be buying homes, but more people are going to be losing their homes. It is one thing to have a housing depression, it is another thing to have another wave … (2 comments)
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Mark MacKenzie
Phoenix,
AZ
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Mark MacKenzie Real Estate Planning
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