by Laura Conaway

Housing starts hit their second-lowest mark in March, falling 10.8 percent. The government has been keeping records on home-building for half a century. We know developers built too many houses, so we can expect they'll hold off for a while before breaking out the bulldozers again.

Here's my question: Where are we in that cycle? Are we looking, as the NYT says, at "more evidence that the steep slump in housing . . . has yet to run its course"? Or, as Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics writes this morning, are we perhaps "levelling off after a calamitous plunge"?

Calculated Risk expects the market to hit bottom sometime this year.

 

The site notes that builders spent the month finishing far more homes, at 550,000, than they did starting new ones (358,000). "This is important because residential construction employment tends to follow completions, and completions will probably decline further," CR says.