Forget stocks. Don't bet on gold. After four years of plunging home prices, the most attractive asset class in
America is housing.
A home under construction in Austin. The number of new homes in the pipeline nationwide is quite low.
From his wide-rimmed cowboy hat to his roper boots, Mike Castleman fits moviedom's image of the lanky
Texas rancher. On a recent March evening, Castleman is feeding cattle biscuits to his two pet longhorn
steers, Big Buddy and Little Buddy, on his 460-acre Bar Ten Creek Ranch in Dripping Springs, a hamlet
outside Austin in the Texas Hill Country. The spread is a medley of meandering streams, craggy cliffs, and
centuries-old oaks. But even in this pastoral setting, his mind keeps returning to a subject he knows as well
as any expert around: the housing market. "I'm a dirt-road economist who sees what's happening on the
ground, and in 35 years I've never seen a shortage of new construction like the one I'm seeing today,"
declares Castleman, 70, now offering a biscuit to his miniature donkey Thumper. "The talking heads who are
down on real estate will hate to hear this, but America needs to build a lot more houses. And in most markets
the price of new homes is fixin' to rise, not fall."
Castleman is in a unique position to know. As the founder and CEO of a company called Metrostudy, he's
spent more than three decades tracking real-time data on the country's inventory of new homes. Each
quarter he dispatches 500 inspectors to literally drive through 45,000 subdivisions from Baltimore to
Sacramento. The inspectors examine 5 million finished lots, one at a time, and record whether they contain a
house that's under construction, one that's finished and for sale, or a home that's sold. Metrostudy covers 19
states, or around 65% of the U.S. housing market, including all the ones hardest hit by the crash: Florida,
California, Arizona, and Nevada. The company's client list includes virtually every major homebuilder and
bank -- from Pulte (PHM) and KB Home (KBH) to Bank of America (BAC) and Wells Fargo (WFC).
Click here for full article....
America is housing.
A home under construction in Austin. The number of new homes in the pipeline nationwide is quite low.
From his wide-rimmed cowboy hat to his roper boots, Mike Castleman fits moviedom's image of the lanky
Texas rancher. On a recent March evening, Castleman is feeding cattle biscuits to his two pet longhorn
steers, Big Buddy and Little Buddy, on his 460-acre Bar Ten Creek Ranch in Dripping Springs, a hamlet
outside Austin in the Texas Hill Country. The spread is a medley of meandering streams, craggy cliffs, and
centuries-old oaks. But even in this pastoral setting, his mind keeps returning to a subject he knows as well
as any expert around: the housing market. "I'm a dirt-road economist who sees what's happening on the
ground, and in 35 years I've never seen a shortage of new construction like the one I'm seeing today,"
declares Castleman, 70, now offering a biscuit to his miniature donkey Thumper. "The talking heads who are
down on real estate will hate to hear this, but America needs to build a lot more houses. And in most markets
the price of new homes is fixin' to rise, not fall."
Castleman is in a unique position to know. As the founder and CEO of a company called Metrostudy, he's
spent more than three decades tracking real-time data on the country's inventory of new homes. Each
quarter he dispatches 500 inspectors to literally drive through 45,000 subdivisions from Baltimore to
Sacramento. The inspectors examine 5 million finished lots, one at a time, and record whether they contain a
house that's under construction, one that's finished and for sale, or a home that's sold. Metrostudy covers 19
states, or around 65% of the U.S. housing market, including all the ones hardest hit by the crash: Florida,
California, Arizona, and Nevada. The company's client list includes virtually every major homebuilder and
bank -- from Pulte (PHM) and KB Home (KBH) to Bank of America (BAC) and Wells Fargo (WFC).
Click here for full article....
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