The Wall Street Journal’s Nick Timiraos analyzes the 5 issues that he believes are critical to the housing industry and to the entities that revolve around it. Click here for a link to his article from today’s WSJ. He states that there is “an uncertain outlook for the year ahead, one filled with questions about what policymakers will choose to do and how markets will react to those decisions.” He quotes Ivy Zelman, chief executive of Zelman & Associates, a housing-research firm who states that “The can has been kicked down the road…” Ivy’s firm studies the big builders, the large building trades firms, and the home center businesses, like Lowe’s and Home Depot. So, Nick and Ivy are coming at these issues from a broad, established perspective and at this point in history, if you focus on the stock performances, the outlooks and the various profit centers of these multi-million $ and billion + $ operations, you see a period of history that is marked by pain, … [Read more...]