By Patrick Emerson,
Oregon Economics Blog
Courtesy of the Wall Street Journal’s Economics Blog and the Oregonian.
The first is some good news in housing:
Quote the Journal:
Because of a drop in housing starts and fewer existing homes put on the market, the inventory of homes for sale has been whittled down.
Taken together, the months’ supply of new and existing homes for sale stood at 8.4 months at August’s selling rates, down from a large supply of about 11 months a year ago.
Equally important, fewer homes are waiting to go on the market. This so-called “shadow inventory” consists of homes in foreclosures, those already repossessed by the lender or homes with a mortgage delinquent for 90 days or more.
While we are talking about housing, here is the Oregonian on the latest Case-Shiller numbers showing that Portland home vales remained flat – which is an improvement:
Lastly here is a little snapshot of where consumer spending goes from the BLS’s 2010 Consumer Expenditure report.
You can see a cool interactive version at the WSJ.
### Related graph from SWJ
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