NBN Online for the week of April 28, 2008

A Push in New-Home Sales Is Needed to Get to Better Times

The outlook for housing and the economy should be gradually brightening within a few months, but before there can be any assurance that the worst of the downturn is over, there needs to be a pickup in home sales, according to panelists at NAHB’s Spring Construction Forecast Conference on April 24 in Washington, D.C.

Residential production and sales this year have declined “more sharply than anticipated,” said NAHB Chief Economist David Seiders, and the situation for the U.S. economy “definitely has darkened,” with more than an even chance that it has lapsed into a “mild” and brief recession in the first and second quarters.

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Lumber Prices Provided by Random Lengths

Congress Must Address Housing Crisis, Economists Say

In a sobering presentation on how the housing slowdown is playing out across the country, Mark Zandi, chief economist for Moody’s Economy.com, said that home price declines will remain significant in the once super-heated markets of California, Arizona, Nevada and Florida, as well as parts of the Eastern seaboard that include the Washington, D.C. and Boston metropolitan areas.

“The only areas of price gain are in Texas, parts of the Southeast and the farm belt, which is benefiting from selling more corn oil for ethanol,” Zandi told the NAHB Spring Construction Forecast Conference in Washington on April 24.

Nation's Building News Will Not Be Published May 5

Nation's Building News will not be published on May 5. Regular weekly publication will resume May 12.