Today Joe at Business Insider published his interview with Bill McBride from Calculated Risk. He reiterates what McBride said back in February (link), that housing has bottomed, that "the housing turnaround story has a long way to go and is more robust than anyone would have expected, particularly in the hardest hit areas."
If by bottom he means "stopped crashing for the time being" he would be correct. But that's not what "bottom" means in market terminology. When prices or data form a bottom it means a long term uptrend has begun. What the housing market is experiencing now is a bounce, not a bottom. After the crash and trillions of dollars of QE a bounce was inevitable. But a bounce is not a bottom, it's simply a pullback correction in a long term downtrend.
Calculated Risk made economic charts mainstream. Chartist Friend from Pittsburgh is making the technical analysis of economic charts mainstream.
Take a look...
The home ownership rate is dropping
The total amount of mortgage debt is dropping
Home prices are dropping
Housing starts are trapped below the former long term support level and are nowhere near the 1.5 million per year average
And the number of houses sold is in similar, sad shape
Once the bounce loses steam the data will roll over again to new lows. Until then enjoy the bounce. Just don't call it a bottom.
