When prices go up, buyers say, 'Look how much money I would have saved if I bought last year, and if I don't buy now, I won't be able a new home next year,'.
Among the oldest households, the share of people living with their family has gone down, but among people in their 50s and 60s it has gone up.
Rebuilding occurred over years, just in the normal course of events -- I don't think we'll have a building surge here.
Basically, that's saying that it's unchanged. We were doing well, not as well as last year, but we're doing well, and this says we're still doing well.
There may have been a little over-enthusiasm trying to serve the high end previously, but we haven't seen any evidence the high end is having problems. We have also seen some national builders trying to buy market share by pricing more aggressively.
I don't want to overstate it but this is such a huge event it's bound to have a big effect on many construction materials and other construction costs. This is 10 times worse than Hurricane Andrew, when 28,000 homes were destroyed.
We had been predicting home price increases would slow down. Now they won't slow as quickly.
It's going to divert some key materials. It's going to have an effect on building elsewhere. A lot of the areas that were hit are areas that produce wood products.
We're going to have a lot of additional demand for materials, both in the cleanup process and the repair process and going forward in rebuilding.
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