By John McManus | Builder
They say economic and housing recoveries don’t die of natural causes. They’re murdered.
An economic expansion, dating from June 2009, is on pace to break through as the longest in U.S. history—beating the standing 1991-to-2001 record surge—providing it outlives June of next year. What first cropped up in early summer time as geographically random air pockets of lost momentum in home sales now has spread and grown into a wider, more troubling sphere of market inactivity.
Whether the now-prolonged and worrisome “pause” in housing’s trajectory over the past six years is a momentarily painful injury or a mortal wound is a topic that’s grabbed more than passing interest among analysts, experts, and industry stakeholders in residential real estate investment, development, and construction.