Last Sunday I did a hit on MSNBC with Alex Witt about the housing market. This was partly prompted by remarks by Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan that the housing market has bottomed.
My view is quite different. Just about every metric indicates a continuing deterioration. Whether you look at year-over-year sales, building permits, housing starts, orders, or cancellations, things are getting worse with no real evidence of a bottoming.
Let's look at some recent reports by major home builders. Toll Brothers (TOL), which caters to luxury home buyers, reported net income of $54.3 million for fiscal Q1. That's down from $163.9 million in the year earlier period. Much of the decline was due to writing down the book value of land the company owns. Yet even if write-downs were ignored, net income would have been only about $118 million. Signed contracts were down 34%. The company delivered fewer units and signed fewer contracts in every geographic region it serves. It also has significantly less backlog than it did a year ago.
Other home builders such as KB Homes (KBH) and Hovnanian Enterprises (HOV) are reporting similar problems. Indeed the entire housing market seems to be weakening by almost every conceivable measure. Even home prices are showing signs of trouble. Nationwide median prices haven't really fallen, but they have stopped going up. While there are pockets of falling prices all over the country, it seems like it's now just a matter of time before prices start falling in all geographic regions.
Optimists insist the worst is over. But pessimists appear to be more realistic at this time. Those who follow the housing market closely are betting on a continuing decline. Forbes columnist Gary Shilling remains extremely pessimistic. I plan to interview Robert Shiller of Yale University and MacroMarkets on Feb. 27 about his views on the housing market. Shiller recently announced a new home price index he is launching with Standard & Poor's and Fiserv. This index will track actual transaction prices for single-family homes only. I will ask Shiller about this and other issues in our interview, which we plan to post on MoneyMasters on March 8.
