Are We There Yet for Homebuilders? - Part V

One fact that argues for investing now in Homebuilders is the strength of the general economy currently as compared to economic conditions back in 1989 to 1991. The chart below from Economagic shows the decline in non farm payrolls during the last great Housing crisis. The revision this morning to non farm payrolls for August from a previously reported loss of jobs to a gain, is more evidence of general economic strength. I seem to remember back in the early 1990's California had an unemployment rate around 9%.



Just think how bad things would be for Housing if another 2 million Americans lost their jobs.

Homeownership Rate

One of the symbols of the recent Housing Boom was the increase in the Homeownership rate to above trend levels. Some debated the cause of this increase. A recent study by Matthew Chambers, Carlos Garriga, and Don E. Schlagenhauf entitled "Accounting for Changes in the Homeownership Rate," published as a working paper in September 2007 by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, concluded that the main reason for this increase was the growth of exotic mortgage products, and not demographic reasons.

A copy of the study is here.

"We find that the long-run importance of the introduction of new mortgage products for the aggregate homeownership rate ranges from 56 percent to 70 percent. Demographic factors account for between 16 percent and 31 percent of the change."


What does all this mean? If this study holds up under peer review, it would argue for a more prolonged housing downturn for two reasons - this demand will not be coming back anytime soon, and houses purchased by this group will swell inventories.

Are We There Yet for Homebuilders? - Part IV

Another issue to grapple with when buying the Homebuilders is the number of new home sales relative to previous peaks. As you can see in the chart below, if you declare a bottom for housing at the current level, one of the assumptions that you are incorporating into your analysis is that you are comfortable with the fact that the number of new home sales will trough above the peak of the last cycle.

New Home Sales Monthly (January 1963 - August 2007)




This is an important decision because during the last three cycles, new home sales never went above a 900,000 annual rate. During this cycle, they went much higher and peaked at an annual rate of 1.389 million in July 2005. If this extra demand was real demand, due to higher population growth or a more affluent population buying second homes, then this is fine. If it is speculator demand, then we are in big trouble.

So it remains to be proven whether the trough of this cycle should be above or near the peak of the last three when referencing new home sales. Months supply of new homes solves this problem in some ways since it transforms the data into time. If that is the case then we may not be at the trough yet as months of inventory peaked at much higher levels at the troughs of previous down cycles. (9.4 in January 1991, and 11.6 in January 1980.)