homes posts
FeedPosted Oct 20th 2009 12:40PM by Michael Fowlkes (RSS feed)
Filed under: Forecasts, Consumer experience, Housing, Recession
The Commerce Department reported Tuesday that housing starts rose a bit in September, helped by a rise in single-family home construction, but this bit of good news came with some bad news that applications for new home construction were down in the month.
According to the report, construction of new homes and apartments rose by 0.5% in the month, to an annualized rate of 590,000 units. While any growth for housing starts comes as good news in the current market, it is not as good as it appears at first glance, considering that analysts had been expecting to see the annualized rate increase to 610,000 units.
Continue reading Housing starts rose in September, but applications for new construction fell
Posted Aug 17th 2009 4:30PM by Michael Fowlkes (RSS feed)
Filed under: Forecasts, Good news, Market matters, Money and Finance Today, Housing, Recession, Financial Crisis
Homebuilder confidence hit a 1 year high today, providing another sign that the worst of the housing melt down may have passed.
The housing market started to crumble back in 2006, and since that time foreclosures and falling home prices have hit the economy hard, and played a major role in the recession that has effected millions. Today the The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo confidence index climbed to 18, the highest level that it has been since June 2008.
Continue reading Homebuilder confidence hits 12 month high
Posted May 18th 2009 5:00PM by Michael Fowlkes (RSS feed)
Filed under: Good news, Products and services, Consumer experience, Employees, Money and Finance Today, Economic data, Housing, Federal Reserve, Recession, Financial Crisis
As the housing market continues to find its footing, one welcome trend for potential home buyers has been falling home prices. The main consequence of the troubled housing market has been a sharp increase in home inventories, and this has led to a massive drop in home prices, and we see news today that home prices are the
most affordable that they have been in the past 18 years.
The Housing Opportunity Index tracks home prices, and it reported that during the first three months of this year, 72.5% of homes for sale fell within the affordability range, up from 60% during the last quarter of 2008. This sharp jump is another testament to just how quickly home prices have eroded over the past few months.
Continue reading Home prices become more affordable
Posted May 12th 2009 5:30PM by Michael Fowlkes (RSS feed)
Filed under: Consumer experience, Housing, Recession, Financial Crisis
As we all know, the housing market has been taking a beating over the past couple years. The global recession seemed to spark right out of the American housing market, and things have not really been improving too much. With all the homes that are unsold in the country, more and more homeowners have decided to
rent instead of sell their properties.
As the housing market began to come apart at the seams, home inventories started to swell, and prices started to drop. Everyone has been waiting anxiously to see a point where the lower prices would bring massive buyers back into the market, but that still has not happened yet, and instead of lowering prices even further, homeowners have decided to hold onto properties a little longer and pull in some rental income instead.
Continue reading More homeowners look to rent unsold properties
Posted Mar 27th 2009 11:20AM by Michael Fowlkes (RSS feed)
Filed under: Earnings reports, Forecasts, Good news, KB HOME (KBH), Housing, Financial Crisis
The nation's fifth largest home builder,
KB Home (NYSE:
KBH), had its chance to impress Wall Street this morning when it reported first quarter earnings, and it did not disappoint,
easily beating out analyst estimates.
As we discussed in our
earnings preview, the company had been expected to show a net loss of 81 cents for the quarter. The actual loss for the quarter was less than expected, with a reported loss of only 75 cents per share.
Continue reading KB Home posts better than expected quarterly earnings
Posted Mar 26th 2009 5:20PM by Michael Fowlkes (RSS feed)
Filed under: Earnings reports, Forecasts, Products and services, Competitive strategy, KB HOME (KBH), Housing, Recession, Financial Crisis
We will see earnings from one of the major home builders in the morning, as
KB Home (NYSE:
KBH) gets its chance to impress Wall Street when it reports its first quarter numbers prior to the market open.
The company, which last year ranked the 5th largest home builder in the country, is expected to show a loss for the quarter of $0.81 per share. Should the company be able to match these estimates, it would be a great improvement over its fourth quarter loss of $3.96 per share. When looking back at the same period last year, KBH showed a loss of $3.47 per share for its first quarter last year.
Continue reading KB Home first quarter earnings preview
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A little more good news for the struggling housing market Tuesday, as a closely watched home price index showed 
Shares of California-based homebuilder 
In another sign that the housing market may be emerging from its slump, 
July was a good month for new home sales, which saw an 
Wall Street is trading up nicely today, in part due to the news that 
We all know that things have been less than ideal for homeowners over the past year, and we got a little clearer picture yesterday of just how bad things have become. According to a new report, 
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