Tuesday, November 20, 2007

More news from the spin doctors

You may have seen the news reports that construction starts were up. The media and the real estate industry have grasped on to this glimmer of good news like a white shark onto a baby seal. But once again the spin doctors are hard at work with the numbers.

Overall residential construction starts were up in October BUT this is only because of a huge increase in the number of apartments/condos being built. Apartment/condo construction was up about 40%, single family construction was down over 7% compared to Sept. Once again these numbers have a large percentage or error at this early date, +/- 10%!

Since most of us are concerned with houses and not apartments or condos the news is more of the same, bad. House construction starts are down 7% (+/- 10%).

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