Housing Starts and Recessions

Nearly every recession in modern history was ended when housing starts began to pickup again, especially deeper recessions. While we are not officially in recession by those who keep track, certainly growth is at best stumbling forward. It is going to take another couple of years to get out of this recession, but in the end, housing will cost less for the middle class, and they will hopefully have some money left to increase demand and employment. As you can see in this chart from Calculated Risk, housing starts and unemployment move with each other. We are going to have to get through this inventory which is decreasing. And of course population is increasing. One might hope that housing starts can begin to rise in a couple of years. Until then, we'll have to hang in there!