New and existing home sales were down in January from December. Analysts are seeing a trend in slowing home sales. Rising interest rates have contributed to slowdown but sales have not stopped altogether, but have just reached a plateau of sales activity. Even this slowed-down tempo of home sales will result into historically high pace of home sales.
Jan 072010
Jan 062010
I have been brooding on and on the state of U.S. housing market. We saw stellar performances during year 2005, but estimations for year 2006 have been slightly less enthusiastic. We haven’t gotten to far into year 2006 and already some alarming sings are sprouting up. KB Home informs us that their orders are down and cancellations are up. This is tough situation for any company. It is not as bad as is sound though, because KB Home has massive backlog of orders that will carry it thorough most part of the year, but it remains to be seen what happens on the second half of the year.
Jan 062010
Japan is a good market for log home companies. Country has strong woodworking and artisan tradition, but past industrialization has stripped the country of most usable forests – usable in the sense of log home building. Nowadays, Japan is very much environment considerate and they know what devastating effects clear cutting over the mountains would have. Therefore they generally prefer to import log dwellings that fit to picturesque mountain scenery.
Many large log home manufacturers have been relying on Japanese sales for years. During the Asian economic crisis this reliance cause huge difficulties for many companies – sales plummeted. Future looks bright though, Japan is making strong economic comeback.
Some of the strongest players on this strengthening Japanese market come from Finland (amazingly). Americans have the longest business relationship with Japanese on the area of log homes, so their total volume is still hard to top. Finns have been able to shake the market because of their (or should I say our) log homes have that special Scandinavian design. Scandinavian design is notorious for its pulling power among Japanese consumers, and for that matter, among other consumers too.
Original motivator for this article came from this story that was published at Vancouver Sun. Several companies (Superior Log Homes, Norse Log Homes, Ram Creek Log Homes and Big Foot Homes Inc.) are mentioned in this article and if you want to know what are their future plans, you better read the original.Here is a link to a Japanese building material survey. You will notice that U.S. and Canada are very strong building material suppliers. Finland is usually mentioned in relation with wood materials.