In racing, a DNS means that a car Did Not Start.  One could say that it is even worse than the dreaded DNF (Did Not Finish).  Not making it to the Starting Line is definitely worse than not making it to the Finish Line.

But for Housing Starts, it is a good thing…  at least it is here and now.

Two years ago I wrote a post about how Housing Starts had fallen to their lowest level in 17 years.  Now, we are close to the lowest recorded levels.

But there is still too much inventory.  I know, looking at the listings numbers, we are WAY down from where we were a few years ago.  In the Atlanta area we are below 70,000 listings.  A couple of years ago, we were over 120,000 listings.  But, sales have continued to slow.

The statistics look better, and frankly, we need to NOT compare sales data to the period from about 2004-2007… it wasn’t sustainable.  But we need to get the stats up from where we are.

The first step is to deal with excess inventory.  And just like the first step to getting out of the hole is to stop digging; if there are too many houses, building more doesn’t help.

Link to original post from 2008.