Construction Spending up 9.6% Year over Year

[UWDude]

Our economy is suffering because we are in a glut of supply. There is just simply too much stuff around to create a demand for new products. Somehow people get by, and the internet has a lot to do with that. Used goods are being rotated around more efficiently.

The real estate market, however is not being rotated well, because people and banks invested heavily into it at inflated prices, and are sitting on the properties trying to wait out the storm. Inflation will eventually give people the illusion that they are selling their properties at a minor loss or profit.

[adams101]

Importing millions a year in illegal laborers are not helping "the trades". The border states are absolutely hammered. Even if construction were to pick up the amount spent on the average laborer would be WAY down.

More people means lower wages. Importing lower wage earners to undercut the labor market means lower wages and possibly no jobs if you have an overhead to support. You simply can't support your family on the same wages a guy who can't speak English, rides a bicycle and sleeps in the canyon will work for.

If we announced a major pickup in the construction building US citizens would not be going back to work. You would simply see a monster sized wave of illegal immigration with the Border Patrol and Corporations waving them on handing them box lunches and bottled waters.

[Natural Citizen]

Reuters reports a much smaller number. http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/...89414F20121005


2 1/2 times 1.6 million would be four million homes vacant.

Yep. It's Reuters though. You know? Reporting on such matters has been equally conforming in the old malfeasance department. Not particularly relegated to the housing/mortgage industry either.

[VBRonPaulFan]

...and, I live in an area quoted in this article. I've seen Seattle as well.
Seattle has tons of vacant and foreclosed houses on any given block.

Fact is, people cannot afford the rent or buying of houses at their current prices. All the "jobs" that have been created have been in fast food or customer service.

But if you want to believe that everything is coming back, and sunshine is just around the corner, be my guest.

No, it is just that the labor market in the US has changed very rapidly in the last 15 years and the country hasn't been able to adapt effectively. It's all about tech based jobs now, the sales jobs and manufacturing jobs of the 80's that anyone can do are gone and probably won't be coming back for a while.

I looked at houses in the Seattle area when I was interviewing with Microsoft - the CoL there is high more or less because of Microsoft more than anything else. It's all about location. If you can afford to live somewhere now considered undesirable because they're sort of in the country, or in an area where a military base shut down, etc - you can get a killer deal on a house in various places all over the country.

[Jordan]

No, it is just that the labor market in the US has changed very rapidly in the last 15 years and the country hasn't been able to adapt effectively. It's all about tech based jobs now, the sales jobs and manufacturing jobs of the 80's that anyone can do are gone and probably won't be coming back for a while.

I looked at houses in the Seattle area when I was interviewing with Microsoft - the CoL there is high more or less because of Microsoft more than anything else. It's all about location. If you can afford to live somewhere now considered undesirable because they're sort of in the country, or in an area where a military base shut down, etc - you can get a killer deal on a house in various places all over the country.

Exactly.

If people could live anywhere, then shadow inventory would have a devastating impact on national real estate. In markets with the most foreclosed homes, shadow inventory is a big deal. Everywhere else, there isn't enough real estate at the current price.

[UWDude]

If you can afford to live somewhere now considered undesirable because they're sort of in the country, or in an area where a military base shut down, etc - you can get a killer deal on a house in various places all over the country.

Yeah, Detroit has houses for $5,000. But if you don't have a place to work within commuting distance, it's pretty useless to buy a house there.

[oyarde]

Detroit is never coming back.

[oyarde]

There will be others on that list, in about three years.....

[VBRonPaulFan]

Yeah, Detroit has houses for $5,000. But if you don't have a place to work within commuting distance, it's pretty useless to buy a house there.

Yeah, it wouldn't be a feasible option unless you were retired. But for someone retired with a steady income, the deal wouldn't be better. There are areas like that all over the country, where the landscape has so drastically changed economically for the worse that people of working age can no longer afford to live there.

Home building isn't happening in those kinds of areas. Young people are moving out of those kinds of areas, and gravitating towards areas booming economically. The areas booming in this economy are seeing the serious home building to handle the movement. Hell, look at Texas for a prime example of this.

[VBRonPaulFan]

Detroit is never coming back.

They need to raze that city to the ground....