For the third consecutive month, builder confidence sustained record lows. One out of five builders are confident about the single-family home market, according to a monthly index.

Just to give you an idea of how bad that is, in June 2005 the index was 72, which means 72 out of 100 builders were confident of market conditions. Today, only 19 out of 100 feel so positive.

Realty Times question is: where do they live?

While it's true that some areas are growing, most metros are stagnant. Even positive job growth isn't enough to get buyers motivated.

Buyers are so scared, they're not even dreaming about homes right now. According to a builder sub-index, traffic of prospective buyers fell three points to a record-low 14, and that's what has builder confidence down. To have buyers, you need lookie-loos.

So it was no surprise that The Commerce Department reported that building permit applications are down for six months in a row in November. That's the slowest pace for since June 1993.

Construction of new homes and apartments was also down 3.7 percent. New single-family home building fell by 5.5 percent to an annual rate of 829,000 units. That's the lowest level of home building since April 1991.

But just to keep their hand in, builders kept busy with multi-family construction -- up 4.4 percent to an annual rate of 332,000 units.

"At this point, many builders are bracing themselves for the winter months when home buying traditionally slows, scaling down their inventories and repositioning themselves for the time when market conditions can support an upswing in building activity -- most likely by the second half of 2008," Seiders said in a release.

That's OK. The party was great while it lasted, but building for speculators couldn't last forever.

But before you join in the pity party, consider this: homebuilding is still outpacing household formation, which means some areas will continue to have more new homes than they need.

Published: December 19, 2007

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