And the short list of root causes for a market slippage--wherever any save for the lowest price tier of new homes are delivered to new neighborhoods--is now a run-on commonplace: Interest rates are up, home prices have lost traction with income growth, tax incentives have been taken out as a favorable factor, etc.

Metrostudy chief economist Mark Boud's housing outlook assumes continued job growth.

Gone now are assurances that price-to-rent comparisons and median household income vs. median home selling prices had been signaling continued headroom and that absorption rates at the higher end of the new-home market reflected ongoing elasticity as the broad economy bounded forward and jobs, wages, and demographics were now wide-open spigots.

 

The talk-track everybody quietly leans toward--by preference and disposition--is one that holds that the slowdown is temporary, albeit more pronounced and now more protracted than might have been hoped. A necessary digestion of interest rates moving upward, and a recalibration of homeownership desire versus current financial means.

 

Once these ephemeral--many experts believe to be psychological--barriers are overcome, the market can proceed, fueled by a fundamentally constructive quartet of forces: economic growth, corporate profitability, wage and income gains, and household-family formation patterns.

 

Ivy Zelman and her team's The Z Report focuses five of seven bi-weekly data analyses on the recent market momentum reversal's metrics... read the rest of the article by John McManus on builderonline.com