Americans are not buying many mobile homes any more. This is something that has been true for years, and the numbers are only getting worse.

The Census Department released new shipment numbers for May and provided a seasonally-adjusted prediction for annual sales in 2011. Their prediction is that there will only be about 40,000 new shipments this year. That portends a fall off of almost twenty percent from the (more…)

Now is a good time to buy a home. Note: I am not a Realtor© nor am I a part of any other entity with a professional bias toward the value of investment in housing. I am just a guy trying to make two sides of an argument. I put forth the logic for the other perspective – that housing prices will fall even more - last week.

Let me offer a few reasons why the housing market may surprise us:

• Interest rates make homes far more affordable. More people can buy homes. People can bid higher on a home, too.
• The supply of new homes coming on to the market has been low for some time. New housing starts are still not picking up. Housing starts have been suppressed for at least four years. Last year, there were 471,000 housing starts. Homes are still getting older. One estimate says that our nation demolishes approximately 200,000 homes every (more…)

Today I am going to argue why housing prices are going to stall.

It is an argument based on a few “big stories.” The first reason is that people are not forming households like they have in the past. Unfortunately, the problems are compounded by a significant difference in the asset base of future buyers. Growth in household formation has been on hold. How long can people put off buying a home?

Today I am going to list a few reasons why housing prices are not going to recover anytime soon. There are a few problems in play. The root of (more…)

Although the payday lenders would prefer that it was otherwise, poor people have plenty of better options for getting past a short-term cash emergency.

It turns out that people without liquid assets still have a means of getting by. A bit of research from George Washington University listed the six most common ways that participants in their survey said that they “get (more…)

Advance America CEO Patrick O’Shaughnessy tried to link his payday loans with recent research about cash constraints among many households. In an earnings call with investors on July 29th, he said:

“Our customers virtually all of them have a banking relationship, choose from a variety of credit options offered by any number of financial services providers. Ultimately, their decisions are based on value, service, reliability and convenience. They turn to Advance Americabecause ourservice does suit their needs.

As one customer in the You Might Be Surprised campaign told us, the reality of it is that you are not always going to have what you need. And so sometimes as working adult, you know that you have a responsibility to provide for your family. And if it requires you needing to get that help, then that’s an alternative sometimes you have to take. You don’t always want to ask your family to borrow money, you don’t always want to go to a friend, you ultimately want to have a second option.

(more…)