Monday Morning Briefing Letter - 06/30/2008 By Sandy Dunn, NAHB President and Jerry Howard, NAHB Executive VP and CEO

Housing stimulus legislation advanced in the Senate this week to the brink of passage, then hit a snag that will delay further action until after the July 4 recess. Ironically, the source of the roadblock was Nevada Senator John Ensign, whose own state is plagued by the highest foreclosure rate in the nation. Ensign's refusal to allow the bill to proceed was meant to force a vote on his amendment to extend tax incentives for renewable energy technologies, an action that provoked significant ire among the housing rescue plan's bipartisan supporters. Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd said he "had hoped that before we left here for the Independence Day recess, we would be able to send a bill to the President for his signature," but that timeline was altered by Ensign's move. As of presstime for this report, it was unlikely that consideration of the bill would resume until after the Senate's one-week recess.  The snag put a halt to solid progress that was being made to get the bill passed along with its key provisions that would help struggling homeowners and provide a temporary home buyer tax credit to spur home sales. Earlier in the week, the measure easily cleared a key Senate procedural hurdle by a vote of 83-9. NAHB's advocacy team was of course engaged in a full-court press over the past week, designating the procedural hurdle as a "key vote" and running hard-hitting ads in major newspapers. One of our most visible efforts was a full-page ad containing an Open Letter to Congress from NAHB President Sandy Dunn, which attracted substantial public attention. View a full-size version of this ad here. Contact Scott Meyer (x8144) about our ongoing legislative efforts or Jay Shackford (x8406) regarding our ad campaign.

The latest gauge of the housing market's ongoing illness was provided by the Commerce Department's report on new-home sales in May. Data released on June 25 shows that in the middle of the primary home buying season, sales of newly built, single-family homes receded another 2.5% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 512,000 units. This information, along with data showing that the inventory of unsold new homes is only slowly retracting, provided a "strong indication of just how critical it is for Congress to move forward immediately with housing stimulus legislation," noted NAHB President Sandy Dunn. This legislation includes a temporary home buyer tax credit that should help release some of the pent-up demand among potential buyers who may be holding off on a home purchase in hopes of prices going lower. Read our press release or the government's report online. [return to top]

A pair of unfavorable reports released on the housing market this week made headlines across the nation. The latest S&P/Case-Schiller House Price Index, which tracks the nation's 20 largest metro markets, indicated that house prices continued to fall on an annualized basis across the country in April. In fact, 13 of the top 20 markets showed record annual declines, including 10 that were in the double-digits. Relating these numbers to historical trends in housing, some analysts in the national media speculated that the market may be nearing its bottom. Also released this week, and profiled in the latest Nation's Building News Online, was the 2008 State of the Nation's Housing report from Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies. The report said that today's housing downturn is shaping up to be the worst of its kind in 50 years, and has not yet fully run its course. "Despite product cuts rivaling those in the 1978-1982 downturn, the number of vacant for-sale homes on the market did not shrink in the first quarter of 2008," it said. "Until this oversupply is reduced, housing markets will not mend." And, while Harvard's analysts remain bullish about the longer-term prospects for housing demand, for now, they say, the industry faces "a rocky road ahead." Read more in NBN Online.

Effective storm water and erosion control techniques  are the subject of a newly released toolkit from the NAHB Environmental Issues Committee that's available free of charge to NAHB members at www.nahb.org/stormwatertoolkit. Controlling storm water runoff and eliminating erosion not only helps home builders and developers comply with Clean Water Act regulations, but it also can reduce costs, add value to homes and increase profitability. The toolkit is designed to help HBAs devise strategies to support their members by:

• Underscoring the liability and consequences of dysfunctional or poorly planned practices and the benefits of those that avoid impacts entirely.
• Providing training information that creates the most responsible and profitable results, and
• Promoting best practices in both traditional and sustainable storm water and erosion practices and policy tools.

Get your Green Building Update in the latest issue of our new e-newsletter of that title. This great publication is a useful resource that links you to all of NAHB's green building materials and tools. Give the NAHB Green Building Update a read today!  Contact: Calli Schmidt, x8132. [return to top]