The homebuilder spring selling season just started, but reports from the field confirm that sales activity in communities are materializing in a way not seen in years, Barclays Capital said. “We believe the spring selling season has arrived strongly enough to kick-start a positive feedback loop in housing for the first time since 2005,” BarCap analysts said after discussions with executives of some of the largest companies in the industry. Barclays analysts expect 1 million housing starts by 2013 and a return to the historical norm of 1.7 million by 2015, while predicting that prices will rise 1% to 3% annually during that period. On a seasonally adjusted basis, starts increased to 699,000 in January, up from 636,000 a year earlier and 689,000 in December. Barclays estimates that every 100,000 housing starts generate almost 250,000 jobs. “As such, we expect U.S. residential housing to transition from being a headwind to a tailwind for the economy by this time next year,” they say. [Read this article]
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