Some thoughts on the housing market, from Business Week:
“For the first time, big builders are offering massive, often six-figure, price cuts in overbuilt developments nationwide, giving the industry a kind of shock treatment designed to move inventory off the books fast. It remains to be seen whether these radical measures will revive the market or deepen the slump, but it’s certainly having an impact on the local communities…
“The real question is whether the drastic price-cutting will short-circuit the usual long, painful downturn builders seem destined to undergo in this economically sensitive business. This is the first housing slump in which the industry has been big enough and well enough capitalized to even consider such extreme measures. And they are extreme. Margins, which ran as high as 35% at the peak of the housing boom, are close to nil when builders sell at fire-sale prices. If by doing so the builders can force the market to accept the reality that housing values have fallen — and accept it fast — there’s at least the possibility of emerging from the current bust sooner than in earlier down cycles.”