Those three factors weigh heavily against
hopes of a real estate recovery, says the Harvard University Joint Center for
Housing Studies latest annual report. According to the group’s data-crunching,
single-family housing starts fell 15 percent
last year. However, by the end of the fourth quarter, those starts were 30
percent below peak 2005 levels - nearly matching the country’s last housing
peak-to-trough drop between 1986 and 1991. Even manufactured homes were at
their lowest levels in 32 years.
The drop
in homebuilding was so great that the center says it chopped a full percentage
point off national economic growth in the latter half of 2006.