You will probably see this headline thrown around quite a bit in the next few days: "Consumer Prices Drop..."

This may be a "temporary stimulus" for the economy over the next couple of months. Since oil prices have fallen from $140.00 a barrel to under $60.00 a barrel this week, we have see gasoline go from well over $3.00 a gallon to under $2.00 per gallon at many gas stations in the Austin area.

This is certainly a relief in many peoples pockets when filling up at the gas pump.

So what affect might this have on housing?

In my opinion there are some temporary "trickle down" effects we may see such as: a reduce in the cost of building materials(tied to the cost of transporting the goods), a possible spike in new construction over a small 1 or 2 month period as builders who have been responsible and have not overbuilt try to get a few homes on the ground before gas prices increase.

I recently went to a speech given by Oil-man T. Boone Pickens at the University of Texas and was suprised by some of the statistics give by his research team. In any given day 70% of the oil used in the United States goes towards the operation of TRUCKS transporting goods and services.

While it is important to conserve our gasoline in our personal automobiles, he stressed the importance of creating a new fleet of trucks that would be ran on natural gas or some other form of non-foreign oil.

Another figure was that most of these trucks get about 6 miles-per-gallon on average. So it is clear that by the decrease of prices for gasoline, diesel, and other oil based products that there could be a decrease of 30 to 50% of the cost to transport these good to us - the consumer.

No one knows how long this uncertainty will last, but I still am betting for the United States Team to make a comeback after half-time.