Michael Gregory Housing Quotations

Despite the fact that energy prices are creeping up and housing continues to crumble, surveys suggest job gains are providing an offset for confidence. The potential is there for consumer spending to remain resilient.

Is there a risk the Fed has tightened too much? Not with the kind of momentum we're seeing in the economy and not with consumer confidence at record highs. People are wealthier, real incomes are growing, the housing market, while slower, is still super strong and the labor market is still super tight. I don't think the Fed is finished just yet.

Consumers may be wobbly, owing to high energy prices, a vulnerable housing sector and increasingly uncertain medical and pension benefits, but there is nothing like the whiff of solid job growth to keep them on their feet.

It's only a matter of time though before the consumer succumbs to weakening housing and higher gas prices, and I think we'll see that by the third quarter.

This surprise rise in no way alters the broader view that the housing sector continues to cool.