Martin Hutchinson of Money Morning wrote boldly this morning that “the bottom line is that housing has found a bottom and is trending up again” and “the overall trajectory is clearly upwards in housing.”
Hutchinson notes some of the obvious near term drags on a housing recovery, such as continued price declines, foreclosures and related lawsuits, shadow inventory, etc.
However, he believes that overall economic trends, cheap financing, political motivations, improving builder sentiment and a growing population signal an end to the housing collapse.
These are good insights, but like any clever prognosticator, he doesn’t quite bracket his call with a solid time frame for recovery, but he does make some good recommendations about how to take advantage of (particularly the part about plumbing).
A lot of what Hutchinson says makes sense to me, but when it comes to predicting the future of markets, it’s good to recall the following:
“The future will soon be a thing of the past.” – George Carlin
“Predicting the future is easy. It’s trying to figure out what’s going on right now that’s hard.” – Fritz Dressler
