Boy, its easy to get discouraged watching the national news or reading a national paper covering this housing market.  However, we’re still proclaiming the bottom here at least for our home base of metro Atlanta. 

New construction has been hit hard.  Nationally we’ve seen homebuilders dropping like flies with decreased confidence in the market.  Housing starts for new construction single family homes are a good indicator for the housing market, and after reading a recent Atlanta Business Chronicle article, believe it or not I am encouranged.  While the national picture is a little less than desirable with national housing starts slumping again in October to the lowest level since 1959 when the United States Commerce Department started tracking the starts, the silver lining is that October housing construction starts in the South are actually up 1.5% over last month.  Don’t get me wrong, there’s still way too much new construction inventory and lot inventory has crested for quite some time, but it’s saying something that new construction is showing signs of life.  New government programs and falling lending rates will do nothing but help.

While we certainly have vast improvements to make in this market, buying into the national coverage will only frustrate and confuse.  I equate it to a weatherman telling you that it’s going to be sunny over the entire United States tomorrow.  You just can’t paint with a broad brush like that.  Make sure you stay opportunistic, think like a buyer, and stop denying this market as anything short of an unbelievable time to buy your first home, your second home, your first rental property, etc.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 19th, 2008 at 10:57 pm and is filed under Market Statistics, Metro Atlanta, New Buyers, New Construction. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.