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Politics : High Tolerance Plasticity -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Peter van Steennis who wrote (10235)	11/4/2001 10:14:38 PM
From: kodiak_bull	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 23153

Peter, Medium term, I think the home builders must suffer, a shrinking E reducing the P/E over time, longer term they will suffer more. It may take some time. I covered shorts in TOL and HOV on Thursday, waiting to let the death of the 30 year bond go through the system. Shorting TOL at 35 is always more profitable than shorting at 32, imho. That's a good list of shorts, I think. Here's another piece of bad news (it just keeps piling up, the banks and the Fed are running double time just to keep these prices afloat). Here's another article: Realtors: Few Housing Market Gains in '02 Nov 3 5:37pm ET WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The main U.S. real estate trade association forecast on Saturday that the housing market would slow moderately in 2002 despite record low interest rates. Existing and new home sales should total 5.16 million units in 2002, down a negligible 0.6 percent from an anticipated level of 5.19 million units for this year. This year's anticipated level of home sales is a 1.3 percent increase over 2000, the National Association of Realtors said. "The weakest performance is expected around the end of this year, dampened by the consequences of the attack on America, just as the nation was settling into an economic slowdown," said the association's chief economist, David Lereah. The pace of existing home sales should begin to rise again in the spring of 2002, he said. Lereah forecast the 30-year, fixed-rate mortgage, which averaged 6.56 percent this week, would stay around 6.7 percent and rise gradually to 7.2 percent by the end of next year. "Considering mortgage interest rates are close to the lowest levels we've seen since the 1960s, and many areas of the country will be transitioning into a buyers' market, there will be an excellent window of opportunity in the months ahead, especially for first-time buyers," Lereah said in a statement. The association expects new home sales to slip 0.8 percent in 2001 to 874,000 units, but rise by 0.8 percent next year. The national median home sales prices will grow 6 percent in 2001 to $147,300, then rise by 3.4 percent in 2002 to $154,400, Lereah forecast. A survey of homeowners showed that psychologically, gains in home values have offset some of the losses from stock market declines. The typical homeowner has an accumulation of $50,000 in equity in his or her house, the trade association said. Wealthier and older households have greater equity, according to the realtors' study. "The buildup of home equity provides Americans with both financial resources and security," Lereah said. Finally, here' something I copied off the Yahoo TOL board, which is not a bad place to catch up on some fairly bearish (but reasonable) points of view: "The National Association of Home Builders Index dropped to 48 from 56 in Oct. This is the largest single monthly point drop since the NAHB started compiling the index in 1985." Kb