Further to the trends in high confidence by homebuilders, check out these trends in single- and multiple-unit housing starts.
There’s no question – the US housing sector is at pre-2008-crisis levels in terms of new housing starts. The questions we have are about whether the fundamentals that blew up the housing market in 2008 have been repeated.
We know that US banking is more concentrated than it was in the 2000s. We also know that there has been no replacement for Glass-Steagall to protect consumers from self-dealing, high-risk banks. We do not, however know if there is the same fundamental criminality that destroyed the market definitely in 2008.
We are monitoring this more closely in 2017.