Posts Tagged ‘market’
Saturday, February 27th, 2016
Article source: CMDGroup
The multi-family market is where the excitement is to be found in the U.S. and Canadian city housing starts markets.
Table 6 shows some strikingly large percentage gains in multi-family starts from 2014 to 2015, with New York (+109.6%) – already busting at the seams with high-rise towers – more than doubling its annual volume of groundbreakings.
Miami (+60.4%) and Dallas-Fort Worth (+54.4%) recorded year-over-year multi-unit starts increases that were ahead by more than half. While Miami has staged a nice recovery (to 16,000 units in 2015) in multi-unit starts since its disastrous level (only 1,600 units) in the Great Recession year of 2009, it still remains considerably below its 15-year previous best figure of 23,300 units in 2005.
Dallas, on the other hand, in 2015 (28,000 multi-family units) shot well past its prior most stellar year (18,400 units in 2008).
Boston (+42.5%), Los Angeles (+34.2%) and San Francisco (+30.5%), in 2015, had multi-family starts levels that were close to or better than one-third higher than in 2014.
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Tags: Alex Carrick, Canada, CMD, CMDGroup, Housing, market, multi-family, US
Comments Off on Latest Annual U.S. and Canadian City Housing Starts (Parts 3)
Friday, February 26th, 2016
Article source: CMDGroup
In the previous Economy at a Glance, there was an examination of ‘total’ housing starts in the largest urban centers in the U.S. and Canada.
2015 ‘actuals’ and year-over-year percent changes were laid out in two tables for 12 cities south of the border and six on the northern side.
The figures are being called ‘starts’, although for the U.S. centers they are actually derived from residential building permits.
The city definitions are based on broad boundaries that include downtown cores and nearby suburbs with close commuting ties.
In this current EAAG, the focus will be narrowed to the single-family market.
Nation-wide in the U.S., single-family starts are now accounting for about two-thirds of total starts, with multiples making up the other 33%. (In Canada last year, the proportions were the reverse, 35% for singles and 65% for multiples.)
The share in the U.S. taken by ‘singles’ has dropped dramatically over the past several years. A decade ago, it wasn’t uncommon for singles to be as much as 80% of total starts.
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Tags: Alex Carrick, Canada, CMD, CMDGroup, Housing, market, single-family, US
Comments Off on Latest Annual U.S. and Canadian City Housing Starts (Parts 2)
Wednesday, February 24th, 2016
Article source: CMDGroup
This Economy at a Glance (EAAG) will look at home starts in major U.S. and Canadian cities, according to ‘totals’ (Part 1), plus single-family (Part 2) and multi-family (Part 3) markets.
The accompanying tables rank the dozen American and half-dozen Canadian cities by actual start levels in 2015 and year-over-year percent changes.
For both the U.S. and Canada, the cities are the broad designations (MSAs and CMAs) which include downtown cores plus all suburbs with close live-work commuting ties.
The website versions of these three articles include a wealth of graphs, since it is often true that a picture is worth a thousand words.
Nevertheless, here’s commentary on total new home groundbreakings in the 18 major cities.
In the U.S., the monster-sized market for total housing starts in 2015, at 86,400 units, was New York.
Two cities in Texas, Houston (56,900) and Dallas-Fort Worth (56,400), were in second and third places respectively, but way back.
Los Angeles (33,700) and Atlanta (30,000) placed fourth and fifth.
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Tags: Alex Carrick, Canada, CMD, CMDGroup, Housing, market, single-family, US
Comments Off on Latest Annual U.S. and Canadian City Housing Starts (Parts 1)
Monday, February 15th, 2016
Article source: CMDGroup
The steep descent in the global price of oil began in early July 2014. It was rapidly accompanied by moderate to severe pullbacks in the posted charges for many other commodities.
Not by coincidence, late-summer 2014 was also the moment that launched many radical readjustments in currency values around the world.
Resource-supplying nations, suffering damage to their foreign trade balances, have been experiencing the most severe exchange rate declines ever since. Russia, Brazil, Australia and Canada are the prime examples.
The United States, viewed by international currency traders as a safe haven amidst all the turmoil, has seen its dollar move from strength to strength.
Nor has it hurt that as possibly the world’s most open economy, the U.S. marketplace has adjusted and recovered better than any other nation’s since the Great Recession. Indeed, U.S. employment and output have improved to such an extent that the Federal Reserve has moved out front among central banks in adopting a hawkish position on interest rates.
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Tags: Alex Carrick, China economic, CMD, CMD Group, market, money, Shanghai
Comments Off on The Greenback and Yuan are Ships Passing in the Night
Friday, February 12th, 2016
Article source: CMDGroup
Spending time in U.S. stock markets lately has not been a walk in the park. Drooping equity prices are a symptom of assorted maladies. The three that stand out most prominently are as follows. First, a great many people are worried about China’s economy and especially the state of its banking sector. There are thought to be way too many shaky loans in danger of crumbling if growth continues to decelerate. The subsequent drop in value of the yuan won’t be pretty.
Second, on account of a shockingly low international price for oil, investment in the U.S. energy sector has gone into a tailspin, affecting certain regions of the country more severely than others.
And third, the uplift in value of the U.S. dollar is limiting the ability of American manufacturers to win export sales. Some of the nation’s biggest firms are being negatively affected the most.
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Tags: Alex Carrick, Canada, China, CMD, CMD Group, Economy, job, market, stock, US
Comments Off on A Dozen Mid-February Economic Nuggets
Friday, January 22nd, 2016
Article source: CMDGroup
At the end of 2010, the unemployment rate in the United States was 9.3%.
Five years later, as of December 2015, the national jobless figure has been cut nearly in half, to stand at 5.0%.
There’s a common lament being heard that the tightening in U.S. labor markets has been overstated because a large bloc of potential workers has given up hunting for a job.
Furthermore, so the argument goes, whatever employment improvement has happened isn’t yet leading to better wages and salaries and the economy won’t really build up a head of steam until workers are being paid more, so they can spend more.
This Economy at a Glance will look at the percentage changes of year-over-year average hourly earnings for both production and supervisory workers in the private sector as a whole, and for major industrial sectors. Historical data can be readily downloaded from the web site of the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
In the hopes of finding trend lines, the analysis in this EAAG will be limited to the past five years.
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Tags: Alex Carrick, architect, build, CMD, CMDGroup, Construction, Economic, finance, jobs, market, money
Comments Off on U.S. Wage Gains: Construction versus other Major Industrial Sectors
Friday, January 15th, 2016
Article source: CMDGroup
In the early going of 2016, the headline story has been the heightened level of anxiety displayed by stock market investors. Versus 2015’s year-end closings, both the Dow Jones Industrials index and the S&P 500 are -6.0%; NASDAQ is -7.8%; and the Toronto Stock Exchange, -5.2%.
Compared with their most recent highs, the DJI is -10.7%; the S&P 500, -10.0%; NASDAQ, -11.8%; and the Toronto Stock Exchange (TSX), -20.5%. The TSX has given its passengers a particularly bumpy ride. It has fallen into ‘bear’ territory (i.e., a decline of 20% or more.)
The main widely-cited reason for the sell-offs has been an expectation of weaker growth in China. There are two highly-charged ways in which such a pull-back has unfortunate repercussions for the U.S. and Canadian economies. First, the value of the yuan is being lowered, to make the price of Chinese exports more competitive in world markets.
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Tags: Alex Carrick, architect, build, Canada, China, CMD, CMDGroup, construct, Economy, global, homes, jobs, market, real estate, residential, stock, stocks, US
Comments Off on A Baker’s Dozen Mid-January Economic Nuggets
Friday, January 8th, 2016
Article source: CMDGroup
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), the U.S. economy recorded its second-best month for jobs-growth last year in December, +292,000. Only October’s +307,000 was better.
2015 ended with a gain (+292,000) that was considerably above the monthly average for the year as a whole (+221,000). There is speculation by some analysts that December’s strong result may have been aided by weather that was unseasonably warm.
The final tally of the total number of jobs in America at year-end 2015 was ahead by 2.65 million compared with 2014. One big story has been the shift in the composition of those jobs. According the ‘household survey’ of employment, all of the grand-total increase came in full-time work. The total number of part-time jobs contracted slightly.
Earlier, after the Great Recession, concern was often expressed that while the jobs picture was improving, too often the work being offered was of the poorer quality, lower-paying and less-stable part-time variety. This dilemma appears to have self-corrected in the latest 12 months.
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Tags: Alex Carrick, build, Canada, CMD, CMDGroup, construct, Economic, employ, Housing, job, manufacture, market, US
Comments Off on U.S. and Canada December Jobs Reports Should Quell Some Jitters
Thursday, January 7th, 2016
Article source: CMDGroup
Talk to a demographer and he or she is likely to tell you that everything important that is happening in society and business can be explained by their practice or science.
As an economist, I don’t fully subscribe to such an assertion. Besides, what would I do if I didn’t have interest rates, inflation and government policy to mentally juggle as well as the study of demography?
But I don’t dismiss the claim out of hand either.
It does warrant admitting that population level, change and age-structure over time are key determinants of construction activity in several major type-of-structure categories.
That will be the focus of this Economy at a Glance, in two parts. The story will be told through the use of eight graphs.
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Tags: Alex Carrick, architect, build, Canada, census, CMD, CMDGroup, Construction, Economic, Economy, Housing, job, market, real estate, US
Comments Off on Eight Demography Charts that Explain U.S. Construction Activity
Friday, November 13th, 2015
Article source: CMDGroup
- Globally, the U.S. economy is outperforming all others.
- Europe is still sluggish and the ECB (European Central Bank) may embark on more quantitative easing. Likewise Japan and its central bank. China’s monetary agency has been lowering interest rates to stimulate growth.
- In the mid-00s, China accounted for 40% to 50% of world demand for most commodities. With China’s slowdown, prices for raw materials worldwide are in the doldrums.
- The present economic forecast can be labeled a ‘throwback’ in the sense that it’s similar to the 1990s and earlier when the U.S. always led growth internationally.
- Furthermore, in those ‘old’ days, U.S. prospects were limited by large-volume foreign energy imports. Now, thanks to domestic fracking, that handicap has been lifted.
- The U.S. monthly foreign trade deficit (annualized) has shrunk from a range of -$600 to -$800 (billions) to -$400 to -$600 (billions). The reduction is quite positive for GDP.
- China’s growth has dimmed from a range of +10% to +12% to an ‘official figure’ of +6.5%. Many analysts believe the nation’s annual advance may truly be closer to +3.5%.
- In an unprecedented turnaround, there have been several months this year when the U.S. has recorded a trade surplus with both OPEC and Saudi Arabia. A cause for headlines.
- The Federal Reserve will likely begin to hike the federal funds rate in December. The increments over the next couple of years will almost certainly be tiny (100 basis points at most each year, where 100 basis points = 1.00%).
- When the U.S. economy is functioning on all cylinders, annual ‘real’ (i.e., adjusted for inflation) gross domestic product (GDP) growth is +3.5%. From 2015 through 2017, probably the best that can be hoped for is +2.0% to +2.5%.
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Tags: Alex Carrick, Canada, CMD, CMDGroup, Economic, employe, job, jobless, market, US
Comments Off on U.S. Economy and Construction Markets – Executive Summary for Greenbuild
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