As we begin 2023 and I mark the 50th year of my career, I have been reflecting on a lifetime I have lived witnessing dramatic innovation, and social and political change, as we all live in a very different world than I did as a young boy growing up in the Deep South of the 1950s. We are a better…
Read MoreAuthor: Pierre Villere
Mixed News Continues to Confuse Economic Outlook
All manner of economic indicators once again have us puzzled as to what direction the economy is headed and far too many continue to raise doubts that we are headed for a recession. Yes, there are some headlines regarding layoffs in the tech industry that appears to be a re-balancing of employment numbers that have just reflected unbridled growth at…
Read MoreThe Cooling Distribution Center Market
A couple of months ago, I wrote about the cooling housing market, observing that just as in every prior rising interest rate environment, housing sales have fallen, and new home starts are contracting. This has been true at least 10 times throughout my 50-year career, especially during the Paul Volker and Alan Greenspan stewardships of the Federal Reserve, when both…
Read MoreA Look at the Strong Dollar
One of the economic bright spots that is being masked against the backdrop of the front-and-center economic news – inflation – and all the other looming issues like the threat of recession, is the silver lining of the strong U.S. dollar. While good for our economy and our individual pocketbooks, it has a profound effect on the global economy, our…
Read MoreHow The Housing Slowdown Affects GDP
Look, there is no sugar-coating this, the housing market is really slowing down because of the action the Fed is taking to tame inflation. Interest rates are on the rise, and that has served to tamp down a tremendously overheated housing market that was starting to look eerily similar to the tulip mania craze of the 1600s in Holland, when…
Read MoreAir Travel in Disrepair
The extraction and processing of construction aggregates is a complex business that requires extensive expertise at many levels, a reality that is lost on the average consumer watching a load of rock being discharged on a construction site. To accomplish the production of the most basic and critical of all building products requires an infrastructure of personnel that lend their…
Read MoreIt Isn’t The Office… It’s The Commute
Construction activity follows the trends in construction types. We go through secular, cyclical changes in the types of construction that developers with the money chase. Over the years, there have been booms in hotel construction that dominated many larger markets, or big box retail, or specialty high-end shopping centers, and of course, office buildings of all types. This includes low-rise…
Read MoreThe Economy Rockets Up – Is a Slowdown Coming?
The answer to the headline above is … maybe. It’s like a rocket booster that fires off its launching pad and zooms up into space, but then starts to fall rapidly back to earth. I know, I know – Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos have figured out how to land them back on earth safely, but for more than 60…
Read MoreThe Housing Affordability Challenge
Last month, I wrote about a recent report issued by the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Opportunity Index, also known as the “HOI,” which showed that just 54.2% of new and existing homes sold between the beginning of October and end of December were affordable to families earning the U.S. median income of $79,900. This is down from…
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