Improving Markets

The most recent news in the housing market....

New home starts are way up…seemingly in the face of the election and the looming fiscal cliff. Annual starts are the highest since the end of 2008 while lot development continues to lag absorption. Today’s lot inventory is the lowest since 2003.

Has context overthrown content? Numbers don’t lie, it’s just the people presenting them that do. How can the market be in freefall one week and showing signs of a full recovery the next? Articles, sound bites and quotes flood our media outlets both nationally and locally creating very conflicting reports about the housing market. It has almost become laughable. Invariably these posts aren’t helping or informing anyone, they’re basically just facilitating and supporting any preconceived perceptions that the general public already had. People either latch on to the article that fits their perceptions or downplay the numbers that differ from what they think they think.

 The nature of expertise is a variable thing. It is fascinating how and why some people, real estate analysts or media outlets come to be seen as legitimate commentators on the housing market, or any issue for that matter, sometimes and most often when they can be demonstrated to have very little understanding of the actual market on which they are commenting. Basically there are too many talking heads out there that don’t really understand the dynamics of our housing market.

There is a significantly different assessment of the market depending on who you talk to and there are dozens of different housing markets within each housing market, sometimes even within each submarket. While the old adage of “housing is local” is true, it has taken on a new definition today. The shift in the economy and housing market back to the basics is happening everywhere and a return to locally produced products and services remains a top priority to consumers. Most sources out there, the “context”, attempt to report local figures while looking at it nationally… Metrostudy, the “content”, reports local figures from the actual local level. Genius! I know… There is no “button” that can be pressed to get all the answers but there are locally produced products and services that can get us back to the basics. At Metrostudy’s core is our unwavering commitment to our locally produced lot-by-lot quarterly inventory count that is performed throughout 88 MSA’s across the country every 90 days. We are a boots on the ground company that employs over 300 local field researchers that physically drive more than 40,000 subdivisions inspecting over 4 million lots. Metrostudy remains the only housing research firm in the US that adheres to this primary methodology covering over 60% of all new construction across the country.

As read in Realty Times Headlines 7/16/2012