There have been some recent articles arguing the “housing bottom is nowhere in sight”. That isn’t my view.
First there are two bottoms for housing. The first is for new home sales, housing starts and residential investment. The second bottom is for prices. Sometimes these bottoms can happen years apart.
For the economy and jobs, the bottom for housing starts and new home sales is more important than the bottom for prices. However individual homeowners and potential home buyers are naturally more interested in prices. So when we discuss a “bottom” for housing, we need to be clear on what we mean.
For new home sales and housing starts, it appears the bottom is in, and I expect an increase in both starts and sales in 2012.
As the first graph shows, housing starts, both total and single family, bottomed in 2009 and have mostly moved sideways since then – with some distortions due to the ill-conceived housing tax credit.
New Home sales probably bottomed in mid-2010 and have flat lined since then.
