19
Feb
Monthly Housing Starts and Building Permits
Today’s release of the monthly housing starts and building permits data showed a 16% and a 5.4% drop, respectively for January 2014. This latest housing data was much worse than most economists had expected.
Actually, the declining trends in the housing market have been showing up over the past few months. The majority of economists have attributed the weakness to the severe winter weather, but myself and a small minority of economists believe it’s actually the modest increase in mortgage interest rates that are the primary culprit in the housing market slowed down. Read more 