Bellevue Real Estate, Mortgage, and Economy 10/25/10
Posted on 25 October 2010
Here is the Bellevue Real Estate Report for October 25, 2010.
Last week saw September Housing Starts UP 0.3% to an annual rate of 610,000 units, well ahead of the expected 580,000 unit pace. Even better, starts are UP 4.1% over a year ago. Interestingly, the September gain was totally driven by a healthy 4.4% rise in single family starts, while multi-family starts dropped 9.7%. But multi-family starts are volatile month to month, and are actually up 100.0% compared to a year ago, while single family starts are off 10.8% during the same time frame.
Builders remain cautious, as new Building Permits for September dropped 5.6%, to a 539,000 annual rate. This number of course reflects plans for builder activity a few months out. Nonetheless, the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) reported builder confidence rose in October for the first time in five months. This brings it to a level not seen since June. The NAHB’s chief economist feels the new home market is now past the quiet period that followed the expiration of the home buyer tax credits and the summer slowdown in the economy.
UP WITH VOLATILITY… It was not a quiet week on Wall Street, with a big move down in stock prices, which then came back up. But the markets did close up four out of the five days, so the week ended with all three major indexes ahead once again. Investors focused on a pile of pretty good corporate earnings results, but there were some less than stellar economic reports to get through too. For the week, the Dow ended UP 0.6%, to 11132.56; the S&P 500 was also UP 0.6%, to 1183.08; and the Nasdaq was UP 0.4%, to 2479.39.
Industrial Production was off 0.2% in September, below estimates, though production is up at a 4.9% annual rate for the last six months. Capacity Utilization also dipped down to 74.7% for September, although it’s still 6.5 percentage points above the low it hit back in June 2009. Countering these figures, the Philadelphia Fed Index for manufacturing in that region was back into positive territory. Leading Economic Indicators were up 0.3% for the month and weekly jobless claims fell a bit, though they’re still well above 400,000.
The good news came in corporate earnings, with more than 100 S&P 500 companies reporting including 12 of the Dow components. The financials did well, with 21 out of 27 reporting better than expected earnings per share. In the tech sector, Apple and IBM also did nicely in the earnings department. Coca-Cola, Caterpillar, and airlines also showed gains. Even though the recovery has slowed, the vast majority of public companies continue to make good profit numbers.
No responses yet. You could be the first!