Manufacturing received several pieces of good news in recent days that could eventually lead to higher demand for factory construction. On Friday, President Bush signed the American Jobs Creation Act, which will gradually lower the tax rate on domestic “manufacturing”, including most construction, architectural, and engineering services. The law also repeals an export tax break that the World Trade Organization ruled was an illegal subsidy. The European Union had imposed steadily rising tariffs, currently at a 12% rate, on a broad range of manufactured goods, in order to pressure the U.S. to repeal the tax break. On Monday, the EU announced that it would suspend the tariff on January 1, when the repeal takes effect. Also on Monday, the value of the dollar hit a 12-year low against the Canadian dollar and multi-month lows against numerous other currencies, which should make U.S. exports more price-competitive.
The homeownership rate in the third quarter was a seasonally adjusted 68.9% of all households, the Census Bureau reported Monday. That was slightly below the record high of 69.3% in the second quarter but up from 68.3% in the third quarter of 2003. Since the third quarter of 2000, the homeownership rate has grown the most for householders who are less than 35 years old (rising 2 percentage points from 41.1% to 43.1%, vs. a 1.3-point gain overall). That's a favorable omen for homeownership, since this age group will be growing more rapidly than the overall population as baby boomers' children reach adulthood. But the jump in ownership by an age group that historically rented for several years also helps explain why Census said the rental vacancy rate remained high in the third quarter at 10.1%, down slightly from the 10.2% in the second quarter and a record 10.4% in the first quarter but up from 9.9% a year before.
