Saturday Morning Coffee with CFG.

The “Spending Report,” otherwise known as “Retail Sales,” showed resilient growth in consumption this year – with July’s report showing over 10% annual growth vs. Summer ‘21 even as stimulus checks have stopped.

This week’s new housing starts report did not surprise, and higher rates and inflationary pressures are cooling the red-hot market.

U.S. homebuilders posted an 8th straight month of declining sentiment, citing construction costs (likely due to higher labor costs amid low labor supply even as lumber prices have returned to earth).

Deceleration Is Not Real 

It’s called “negative acceleration!” 

Home price growth has started to normalize since the Fed started tightening monetary policy (raising rates and reducing their balance sheet of quantitative easing bond-buys).

Still, values are still growing at a faster rate than the lead up to ‘08.

They are also slowing down much faster than the collapse in ‘08.

People like to compare things to 2008 since it happened recently.

Just remember that in the high inflation environment in the ‘80s when stagflation hit, home sales dropped, but home prices did not.