February 9, 2012   1-877-631-2845

You are here: Home / Housing & Real Estate Markets

Mortgage purchase applications lowest since 1996

July 14, 2010 By Jeff Booth Leave a Comment
Failure diagram

Although the worst is over for the building industry, there is a high chance that in the US,  housing prices will fall further. One of the signs that I watch is the mortgage purchase applications index. The reason this is important is that it gives a leading indicator to home sales because home sales generally lag the mortgage application by as much as 2 months. The  index was very positive 2-3 months ago, as the government tax credit moved demand forward, but has, as  expected, fallen … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Housing & Real Estate Markets Tagged With: ,

Why we don’t trust the new

October 14, 2009 By Jeff Booth 5 Comments

Each day we receive feedback from customers rating their experience with BuildDirect on 3 different criteria. 1) Customer Service  2) Product quality  3) Delivery service.  We treat this feedback as crucial to our business. Even though it hurts when the feedback is negative,  it uncovers areas that we improve upon. We never hide from it. In fact we share the product quality reviews un-edited for everyone else to see. The vast majority of the responses are not only positive...but extremely … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Housing & Real Estate Markets, Point of View, Transparency Tagged With: , , ,

Robert Shiller on housing.

July 13, 2009 By Jeff Booth Leave a Comment

  In this video, Shiller explains that it is possible for another bubble in housing, and in some cities we are closer to the bottom than in others.  What I found interesting though, is that the future markets are currently predicting housing to fall another 8% fall in pricing in 5 years. (At 4:00 in the video) … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Housing & Real Estate Markets Tagged With: , ,

What is the secret?

June 15, 2009 By Jeff Booth Leave a Comment

I thought I would share a recent email I sent to my team here at BuildDirect. I wanted to tell you a story of an experience I had last night with one of the local developers in town because it really highlights the type of organization and people we have at BuildDirect. At the Ideas on Tap event, Peter Kefalas of Ethos Developments and Bellaliving.ca came up to me and asked me what my secret was to hiring such a great team. He shared some of his experiences with Jamie B, Marc, Rona, Kailey, and … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship, Housing & Real Estate Markets, Point of View, Transparency Tagged With: ,

Our Big Hairy Audacious Goal

January 19, 2009 By Jeff Booth 2 Comments

I recently spoke at a technology event hosted by www.BCTIA.com where I talked about www.BuildDirect.com, the challenges we have overcome while building the company, and where I thought we were heading.  I am extremely proud of our people, our journey and the company we have built, but I told the audience that I believed it was only the beginning.   I went on to tell them that as far as I was concerned, we were going to build a world class company that will transform the building industry, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship, Housing & Real Estate Markets, Point of View, Technology Tagged With: , , , ,

What next?

September 24, 2008 By Jeff Booth Leave a Comment

I have been trying to stay away from entering the fray with my opinion on the financial markets. There is enough good commentary out there and anyone who has followed this blog for some time knows from previous posts that this has been coming.  (The worst U.S. housing crisis since the great depression  and Will Bush Veto Housing Bill ) With that being said I am going to throw my two bits in. With the housing and financial system in a state of collapse, and the US taxpayer on the hook, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Housing & Real Estate Markets, Manufacturing, Point of View Tagged With: , , , ,

Outside or Inside?

September 17, 2008 By Jeff Booth 2 Comments

The August numbers for new construction of houses and apartments came out today and they were lower than expected bringing them to their lowest level in 17 years, a seasonally adjusted rate of 895,000 units. Prices of homes are falling quickly causing massive losses to financial institutions, which in turn is making them tighten credit which causes pricing to fall further - a true negative feedback loop. And everyday we are inundated with more bad news with respect to the housing and financial … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship, Housing & Real Estate Markets, Point of View Tagged With: , , ,

Great TEAMS win!!!!!

September 5, 2008 By Jeff Booth Leave a Comment

Back in 2001, just before the tragic events of September 11th, BuildDirect was in the process of closing on a $15 million dollar round of financing to enable us to hire and build the company faster. Our technology, while nearing completion was still not ready, and we still had a lot of work to finish before launching our platform. We were out to change an industry, and with that exciting goal, it was fairly easy to attract a strong team. On September 10th 2001, we had 32 employees but were still … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship, Housing & Real Estate Markets, Point of View Tagged With: , ,

leadership in tough times

July 9, 2008 By Jeff Booth Leave a Comment

Tom Peters has a great blog post on leadership in tough times. For those serving the building industry, it is particularly relevant because the blog post originated from a speech he recently gave to the Pacific Coast Builders conference. From the post: "I spoke last Friday to the Pacific Coast Builders Conference—those left standing remain at the heart of a Perfect Storm. One solution to passing my 90 minutes would have been a prayer meeting. Passing on that due to lack of leadership qualifications, … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Entrepreneurship, Housing & Real Estate Markets, Point of View Tagged With: , ,

the impact of tightening credit

July 1, 2008 By Jeff Booth Leave a Comment

Interesting remarks from Eli Broad, Billionaire investor and founder of KB homes, one of the nations largest home builders. "I think housing is going to continue to have a corrosive effect on consumer psychology and the economy in general to a far greater extent than people think, or even far greater than I thought about a month or two ago,'' One of my first posts in April was titled "The worst US housing crises since the great depression". In it, I talked about the fall of house prices and … [Read more...]

Filed Under: Housing & Real Estate Markets, Point of View