“The end to House price depreciation in the vast majority of areas in this country has at last arrived.” -James Cramer
>
Do we even need to mention the absurdity of this?
James Cramer, who has called an inordinate number of Housing Bottoms since the market topped in 2005, now declares that “Housing Has Officially Bottomed.”
What does a bottom look like to Cramer? “Ramping sales, and sales in certain areas are up ten times those of last year, and an end to falling prices. That’s exactly what we’ve seen for the past three months.”
We have seen the housing collapse decelerate, but not stop falling. Price reductions have not ended.
No, we have not seen an explosion in new Housing Starts — rather, this is a noisy volatile series that frequently shows a monthly gain, but continue to show annual falls.
Oh, and that big jump in May housing starts? It is due to a 62% surge in multi-family homes — apartments, high rises, etc. — and not houses. If you want to read anything into it, the Home Builders are showing LESS CONFIDENCE in the Housing market, not more, as Jim asserts in the video. Rather than building to sell, they are building to rent. Hardly a broad endorsement.
~~~
And relying on a single month pop in this series is sheer foolishness: Each circled monthly number below shows a gain over the prior month — none of which resulted in a housing bottom:>
Chart via Barron’s Econoday
>
Previously:
Worst Predictions for 2008 (December 31st, 2008)
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2008/12/worst-predictions-for-2008/
Yet Another Greenspan Housing Bottom Call (May 13th, 2009)
http://www.ritholtz.com/blog/2009/05/yet-another-greenspan-housing-bottom-call/
Sources:
Cramer: Housing Has Officially Bottomed
Tom Brennan
CNBC, June 16, 2009
http://www.cnbc.com/id/31388528
Video
http://www.cnbc.com/id/15840232?play=1&video=1155057267
What's been said:
Discussions found on the web: