Michael Carliner Quotations

We're going to have a lot of additional demand for materials, both in the cleanup process and the repair process and going forward in rebuilding.

We had been predicting home price increases would slow down. Now they won't slow as quickly.

Basically, that's saying that it's unchanged. We were doing well, not as well as last year, but we're doing well, and this says we're still doing well,

I think we're about to face a glut. There's been a tremendous surge of condo construction and also condo conversions over the past couple of years.

Rebuilding occurred over years, just in the normal course of events -- I don't think we'll have a building surge here.

We had expected to see a slowdown, and this confirms it.

When prices go up, buyers say, 'Look how much money I would have saved if I bought last year, and if I don't buy now, I won't be able a new home next year,'

With clean water, if you submerge a house for a week, it's not going to be livable anymore. It would be very difficult to get those contaminants out of the houses.

Excluding homes that haven't been started, the months' supply is historically low.

Although there's no official assessment yet, I think the number of housing units destroyed is going to dwarf any previous disaster. Hurricane Andrew was estimated at 28,000 homes destroyed. The number of homes that are flooded now, that are probably beyond repair, is probably much larger. There are 200,000 homes in New Orleans alone.

There may have been a little over-enthusiasm trying to serve the high end previously, but we haven't seen any evidence the high end is having problems. We have also seen some national builders trying to buy market share by pricing more aggressively.

It's not so much profiteering as panic buying out of fear there will be shortages later on.

It's not unusual when you first start to see the beginnings of a rate increase, that the immediate effect is an acceleration of sales as people try to lock in the lower rates,

It's going to divert some key materials. It's going to have an effect on building elsewhere. A lot of the areas that were hit are areas that produce wood products.

The biggest factor (in raw material costs) is we're at record levels of residential construction.

In most hurricanes, you're talking about wind damage, lost roofs -- that kind of thing. Flooding is much more insidious. Structures are still standing, but there are devastating effects. With the dirty water, it may never be possible to repair it. You'll have to rebuild, or at least gut it.

I don't want to overstate it but this is such a huge event it's bound to have a big effect on many construction materials and other construction costs. This is 10 times worse than Hurricane Andrew, when 28,000 homes were destroyed.

Among the oldest households, the share of people living with their family has gone down, but among people in their 50s and 60s it has gone up.