Several recent newsbites have the real estate industry gritting its teeth, because it keeps looking worse and worse for housing.
If the industry misses a good spring selling season, it's over for 2008.
Standard & Poor's/Case Shiller index says that home prices fell 8.9 percent in the fourth quarter of 2007. That's a much gloomier assessment than the figures gathered by the National Association of Realtors and OFHEO (the Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight.) This is old news, since we already know that 2007 was not a banner year for real estate, but the financial press sees this report as the most reliable backward-looking housing sales index, even though it only covers 100 major markets and doesn't include newer homes or condominiums.
The dual threats of stagflation and shaky jobs have impacted consumer confidence. Higher energy costs are impacting wholesale prices. A one percent jump in December doesn't sound like much of an increase, but consider that the total increase for wholesale prices in 2007 rose 7.5 percent. That's the fastest, largest price increase since fall 1981 when a decade of oil troubles and stagflation finally culminated in a recession.
Consumer prices rose 0.4 percent last month, driven by rising food, energy and health care. Food prices rose 1.7 percent -- the biggest increase in three years, led by staples beef, bread products and eggs. Energy costs rose 1.5 percent.
Foreclosure filings in January rose to one for every 534 homes, says RealtyTrac, an eight percent increase over December. The highest hit states were those with either massive job loss or speculative homebuying including California, Florida, Arizona, Colorado, Massachusetts, Georgia, Connecticut, Ohio and Michigan.
The message is clear -- Main Street is hurting. That's why the Conference Board found its latest Consumer Confidence Index plunged to 75.0 in February from 87.3 in January.
One slight ray of hope is what may happen on do-nothing Capital Hill this week. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and others are set to testify before Congress today and tomorrow about the state of this economy.
All they can say is what we've tried isn't working, at least not for Main Street. 
