David Seiders Housing Quotations

It is a time-tested pattern. February has essentially returned to normal conditions, suggesting to me that we will see a substantial decline in housing starts.

Our forecasts show 6 percent to 7 percent declines in home sales and single-family housing starts in 2006, followed by smaller declines in 2007.

My overall assessment of the housing sector is that we probably fundamentally topped out in the third quarter of 2005 in terms of home sales and housing production.

I was obviously delighted to see this rebound. I think what it tells us is that the housing market is still fundamentally strong.

While new-home sales have been quite strong throughout 2005, we see a cooling of the market to a healthy and more sustainable pace in the months ahead, as substantiated by recent surveys of our builders. For 2006, we expect to see a 6 percent to 7 percent drop in sales, but certainly no reason for alarm. This would make 2006 the second or third best year in housing history.

We see a flattening of housing starts and the beginning of a cooling process.

There's other housing numbers showing some declines in April as well. My own survey of builders has shown them losing some momentum for the last couple of months, including May. I think there's some evidence accumulating that this supposedly highly interest-sensitive part of the economy is starting to give ground.

This has been an incredibly resilient U.S. economy, and housing has been a significant piece of that. The hurricanes provided a very significant risk, but we have seemed to have come through that. Despite the risks that might be present in the near future, I'll throw my cards into this economy simply because of how it's performed.

There is now accumulating evidence that the housing market peaked somewhere in the third quarter. Our survey of builder confidence, which came out yesterday, was down a lot. . . . It was the biggest drop since the first survey after 9/11.

It's been an unprecedented run for the housing sector.

The warmest winter weather on record is what is driving a lot of this. I think that is the key factor behind this very strong surge in housing market activity, and as we move forward I think we're going to see these numbers come back down a lot.

This is definitely a good sign that the housing market is stabilizing.

I do have this sort of weakening of the housing sector, but I think it should be thought of as a systematic cooling down process toward sustainable levels of activity and not viewed as kind of a classic housing downswing that's part of an economic cycle leading to a recession.

The key reason the market is losing momentum is a major decline in housing affordability measures as prices continue to move up aggressively in many, many markets around the country. There are reasons for the builders to be doing things to bolster demand, hold buyers in and limit cancellations, and I think that's what's going on out there.

The housing market is seeking out a peak. While it is still too early to conclude that it has found one, there is growing evidence that the Fed has started to hit its mark and housing will begin losing some of its exuberance in the period ahead.

All the fundamentals remain in place, and the overall housing market continues to exhibit ongoing strength. Favorable mortgage rates, as well as strong household income and job growth, continue to bolster housing demand.