Economic Indicators Affecting Boise Real Estate
ByHopes soared on reports that the recession was coming to a close as the United States economy posted a healthy 5.9% gain and businesses invested to boost GDP. Boise real estate always depends on the national economic trend, so good news will help out.
It was estimated that Gross Domestic Product would increase at a clip of 5.7%, instead it grew at a rate of 5.9% according to the Commerce Department, based on fourth quarter financial numbers. Not since summer of 2003 have we seen such a rapid pace of growth in GDP. The fastest quarter was the third quarter which posted a robust 2.2% growth rate. Adding these contributing factors in with local ones, will help stabilize the Boise real estate market.
Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast GDP, which measures total goods and services output within U.S. borders, growing at a 5.7% rate in the October-December period. It is looking like the first quarter of 2010 will not continue in the rapid pace of recovery shown throughout 2009, which had posted the most impressive numbers since the worst financial catastrophe since the Great Depression. Even thought consumer spending and the housing markets were down, the fact that businesses increased investment in software and equipment helped add some steadiness to the economy and allowed business to liquidate bloated inventories. This wan’t just a national trend either, as the Boise real estate market saw very similar changes in volume as well.
Stripping out inventories, the economy expanded at an annual rate of 1.9%, rather than the 2.2% pace estimated last month, indicating growth was not being driven by demand. Inventory sales amounts were alarmingly reduced from $33.5 billion to around $16.9 billion in the final quarter. Throughout the latter portion of the summer, inventory sales plummeted to $139 billion. The inventory changes alone were responsible for a 3.88% difference in GDP. This was the biggest percentage contribution since the fourth quarter of 1987. A big lift came to the Boise real estate market through the liquidation of these extra inventories by construction companies.
In fact, since 1946 there not been such a dramatic shrinkage in the economy as the 2.4% drop recently. Toward the end of 2009, consumer spending had to be reduced from the projected 2% to 1.7% in consumer spending. Although offset soon afterward, the “cash for clunkers” program drove GDP, by stimulating consumption, up by a respectable 2.8%. Previously reliable consumer spending levels, usually adding about 70% of GDP, was much lower than normal, adding only 1.23% to the nations GDP. The Boise real estate market has shared in the impact of the national financial crisis.
With spending on commercial real estate heading down quickly, the fact that the growth happened at all was due mostly because of equipment purchases and investment in software necessary for business growth and improvement. With business investment being much higher than the projected 2.9%, at 6.5% actually, improvement is on the way. It had dropped 5.9% over the prior three-month period. Spending on new home construction grew at a slower 5% rate in the fourth quarter, instead of 5.7% estimated last month. With growth as high as 18.9%, the third quarter was a busy one. Both exports and imports grew much stronger than initially estimated in the fourth quarter, leaving a trade gap that contributed 0.3 percentage point to GDP growth, the data showed. In the Boise real estate industry, the GDP and other market factors are closely watched.
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