Guidant Financial Group Blog

Believe it or not, housing starts actually increased in April. Not only did they increase, but they increased by 8.2% (see Housing Starts Post Surprise Rise). This is the largest increase since January 2004. Yay!

Financial gurus are suggesting that we not get too excited about this, though, because the jump is largely due to increased multi-family starts. According to Ian Shepherdson of High Frequency Economics, these are purportedly “hugely volatile, and essentially trendless.” Additionally, this increase still leaves the year-over-year trend 30.6% below what it was in April last year.

So what does this mean for the real estate market as a whole? Have we bottomed out and we can now expect things to start recovering?

According to most analysts, no. But who knows? They’ve been wrong before!