From a small northwestern observatory…

Sorry about the lack of posts. Things have been terrifically busy around Greenfield, and I’ve been traveling almost constantly.

Two quick pieces of news, then on to my regularly scheduled prattle. First, the May issue of The Greenfield Advisor just went to press. If you’re not on the e-mailing list, please let me know. We just send out an e-mail once per month with a link to the .pdf file, which you can read on-line or download and print. The newsletter format allows us a little more lattitude than a blog for including graphics, etc.

Second, I’ll be speaking at the Chinese Drywall litigation conference in New Orleans on June 18th. If you’d like more information, either e-mail us here at Greenfield or check out the Litigation Conferences website.

You’ve probably heard today’s jobs report by now — unemployment is up to 9.4% but the rate of job decline is slowing. The stock market is reading this as relatively good news (the 9.4% was already discounted in the market, and the slow-down of decline is good news). In our most recent Greenfield Advisor, we present a more detailed analysis from the Philadelphia FED, along with the implications for real estate. The current consensus thinking is that umemployment will get worse (up to 9.8%), but it will get from here to there slowly, probably peaking in early 2010.

In general, the residential real estate market has probably already bottomed, but we’ll need the credit markets to straighten out before we see strong price growth again. A LOT of personal wealth was wiped out with the market declines, and until this is restored — which could be a few years — we won’t see sales volumes like we saw at the recent peak.

The commercial market is a mixed bag. Some parts have already bottomed, and will slowly recover as the market comes around. Some parts — notably retail (except existing community shopping centers) — will be dark for quite some time.

Anyway, that’s it for today. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me.