The last time so few new permits were issued for housing construction, it was 1961 — when American economists first began keeping records of the numbers of housing permits as an economic indicator.
There are millions of unwanted, unsold and unfinished new housing units in this country. Who would buy these things, right? There are also many millions of vacant, foreclosed houses held in “shadow inventory” by the mortgage industry. Also, there are millions of “existing homes” for sale, and millions of houses and condos left vacant because no-one wants to try to sell them, in this market. It’s a good thing the American economy isn’t completely dependent on construction, housing and lending!
Housing starts posted their biggest decline in 27 years in February while building permits dropped to their lowest level on record, suggesting the beleaguered real estate sector has yet to rebound from its deepest slump in modern history.
CBC, laughing at America’s troubles:
Builders also cut their applications for permits to start new projects to a five-decade low.
The decline in construction activity is the latest evidence that the U.S. housing industry is years away from a recovery.
Building permits, an indicator of future construction, fell 8.1 per cent last month to the lowest level on records dating back to 1960. Permit requests for single-family homes saw the biggest decline. Apartments and condos remained flat.
{ 55 comments }
Even worse, since nobody's buying new appliances, there's also a dearth of available refrigerator boxes.
Just wait — if I can get the plans approved and finally begin construction in this damned Coastal Zone, I'll have a refrigerator box available for someone. I'll even throw in wifi if you at least consider buying my old house in Idaho. Please don't let me get laid off until I get the new house built . . .
That's because you don't need a permit to drag a cardboard box under a bridge.
Or to move back in with your parents.
Well my van down by the river is a palace compared to your box.
librul eleetist. I bet it's a VOLVO van too. I mean, two.
Even Jesus Christ the Carpenter would probably be on the unemployment these days.
He must have sucked at it. There isn't one report in the gospels of a customer being happy with his work.
His safety record was bad, too. I seem to remember a Gospel report about somebody getting a beam in the eye.
"Been Down So Long it Looks Like Up to Me."
It used to be a country song title. Now it's an anthem for the underwater mortgage / buyer-shortage generation.
EDIT: that's no country song, it's a title of a 1966 novel. Apologies to Richard Farina, author. For some reason that had stuck in my head all these years as something listened to once upon a time many vintage-radio-stations ago.
It's a great title to a song however. Get to writing it Mumblety, it could be your ticket out of Hooverville.
It's a Doors (not county) song, based on the dates Morrison probably got the title from the novel.
Unpaid interns simply can't afford the permit..
Not to be a contrarian, but isn't hard to dig a foundation when they are constantly being filled in by blizzards?
Where you live, son?
I believe what the boy was trying to impart was that Dairy Queen is dumping toxic Blizzard (oreo, butterfinger, and m&m varieties) makings into our homes, therefore, by deductive reasoning, I would confidently state that he lives in the Real 'Murika.
Or I'm just high and pouting over my lack of an oreo Blizzard.
The housing market has dropped to where it should have been, without the bubble; sadly a lot of the so-called financial experts want to reinflate that bubble rather than adjust to a stable economy that's not based on a series market bubbles, and a lot of people are unwilling to sell houses at their real values rather the old, artificially inflated prices.
In a lot of cases they can't because they bought them at old artificially inflated prices.
It is the "It's still good… it's still good" principle. I suffered that first hand in the tech boom.
Finally, it ends…at least for now. There was an article out, last night, that shows that Nevade has something like nearly 200,000 empty homes, now. But, still managed to building 70,000+ last year, becase "people like new homes" as the article states. We are so fucking wasteful.
There are subdivisions in the Inland Empire here in Southern California that are basically landscaped landfills
Yes, I saw them. Having spent some time in the Inland Empire, I have to ask… Why?
Because people with jobs in LA and OC thought they needed to own a home (and wanted a "safe neighborhood" for their kids), and the only affordable homes were stucco stockyards an hour's drive from the jobs, out in the dirt-farm smog hills past San Bernardino, where land was cheap and speculation the only thing that grew.
There's not a lot to do out there… I was there for three days and I was bored after one. I'd rather live in LA (in "undesirable" neighborhoods) than deal with that nothing and dirt and fat white olds.
speculation the only thing that grew.
Now, now. San Berdoo is also a hotbed for biker gangs and meth. So many people moved out to the Inland Empire over the last 10 – 15 years that's it's now a lot less safe than it used to be. And the occasional gunfire / meth-lab explosion might make it less boring.
I don't know how accurate they are, but network affiliate news out of Las Vegas claim that 75% of all mortgages in Nevada are underwater. I do know that in my own neighborhood, there are more than a few houses that have been foreclosed on, resold, and foreclosed on more than a couple of times. It ain't pretty. And this is not an expensive community to live in, either.
I have an idea. Let's let in a whole bunch of immigrants, lets say from a near by neighbor like Mexico. They would come in, do lower paying jobs, and the increase in population would increase the need for housing. Plus there would be people around who could take care of the gardens and clean the insides of the bigger houses owned by the rich.
The only downside is that all of these immigrants might want rights, or might produce anchor babies like Michelle Malkin. But, overall, it would seem to be a win/win situation.
If an earlier article from this morning is any indicator, they should be willing to fill these jerbs as unpaid interns.
Maybe we could take in a bunch of Japanese who are afraid of dying an atomic death…they are smart and probably wouldn't drag wages down too much….oh what wages.
Not only that if we get younger immigrants they'll help support Social Security for another 30 or 40 years. I think we have a platform.
It's crazy, but it just might work… Or blow the f*^k up in our faces, but no biggie, amirite?
There's still air and water. Give them their fair shot at those as well.
Have you seen the Gulf of Mexico lately?
Or L.A.?
If you're looking for a place to post your "house for sale" ad, may I suggest tokyo.craigslist.jp?
It’s a good thing the American economy isn’t completely dependent on construction, housing and lending!
Oh, wait! It's not?
If we cut taxes on the top earners and give a trillion or so to the banks, this will all sort itself out.
Hey, if it wasn't for all those vacant houses, where would we steal copper from? Didn't think about that, didja?
If you build it, he will kiss your feet and mow your lawn for a year. Okay, two years.
Economic disasters and human misery is how RealAmerica™ fights socialism.
The cute-kitten video industry remains robust though, as does the Republican Sex Crime industry.
On the other hand, as home buyers my husband and I are enjoying considerable Realtor perks like free brunches and strawberries with champagne whenever we go visit a prospective property. Plus, interest rates are so low I'm almost embarrassed to borrow the money at that rate. So you all can go to hell, I guess. After all, I've got mine, right?
Sorry about that last bit. I'm visiting my christofacist aunt and uncle pretty soon so I have to practice my teabagalog so I can stay out of screaming matches.
Do you have to prove you have money? Free food and drinks sounds pretty good.
My wife and I recently looked into buying a foreclosed home near our kids and could not believe how fucked up the places were. The previous "occupants" (because nobody really owns these places) of the two houses we viewed had completely stripped the places of carpeting, electrical fixtures, etc. The banks which own (now and forever) the places just brought in some workers to slap some white paint on the walls and install white carpet in a vain effort to spoof my tape measure on actual room sizes. As my wife chased off some former occupants, now looters, she got the straight poop about what was wrong with the place (all three bathrooms has severe water damage, etc.). Wells Fargo wanted 239K for a place that needed at least 60K in work to make it suitable for living in again. Yeah, right.
Offer them 50 firm and it's yours! Okay start, with 48,000 first.Bathrooms are not that big a deal just rip it all out some weekend and start from the beginning. And get rid of the cheap carpet after you are done. It's filled with sad and nasty dust already. Just make sure of your neighbors. No empty houses especially!
The banks know that if they just keep pretending this shit is worth something, dumfucks will keep paying for it. Glen Beck investment rules, 101.
The CBC can laugh, but they know that Canada's economy is intimately tied to U.S. resource demands, and less houses is bad news bears for Canadian foresters, for sure.
Ah, the "shadow inventory". Reserve houses for the reserve army of the unemployed.
If I was homeless, I'd be living in one of the thousands of half-finished or abandoned houses on the overgrown fringes of what used to be exurban southwest Florida. Wide selection of accommodations, nice weather most of the year, nobody around to bother me. And the houses pretty much replaced the panthers, so that's not a problem.
Pynchon wrote the wedding vows which is why the ceremony took two weeks.
Can you even imagine? Did he have a grocery bag with a question mark over his head during the ceremony?
And nobody's ever really read it all the way through. Not even Pynchon.
(Okay, I've read nearly every one of his books. And, after "V" and "The Crying of Lot 49," which I loved, I'm not sure why. He sure used "preteritic" a lot in "Gravity's Rainbow." I kept looking it up and kept forgetting what it meant, but maybe because it took me five year to read it.)
TMI?
Deregulated financial markets are gifts from JAY-zus. Back in the boring old days all an investor could do was buy and sell stocks and bonds–no fun at all. Now the Masters of the Universe can create paper assets and make them worth billions, just because they feel like it.
Capitalism is going out with a bang.
Well when i kicked out of my house ,I took a 40 ,000 dollar second loan out about 6 months before and bought 2 quads and a trailer and a new chevy truck to pull it with . Needless to say i just turned in the keys and walked away from the house . I still have my truck, trailer and 2 quads and enjoy them every weekend. Only in america !!!!! Perfect riding weather today in California !
The Inland Empire, if it isn't already, is nearly majority hispanic if I remember correctly. There are still a lot of Okies and their descendents, but I think California actually lost white residents over the last decade.
I lived in Redlands for a couple of years, as I recall it was pretty nice except the barrio over on the NW side. But then, that was 35 years ago and from the Googlemap I can see that all the orange groves we used to have BB gun wars in are now subdivisions. Not enough resolution to see if they have "foreclosed" signs out front, though.
Probably to Alaska, which can, as we agree, keep 'em.
Comments on this entry are closed.