How will be the housing market?

I am traking the the few company that ultimately track the real estate/housing market in the US. Recently they annoucned the result and they disappoint the investor with their outlook. We should listent what the executive of this company has to say abou the outlook of the market. The sample of the compnay are Washington Mutual, Caterpiller, and Dhi

Here is the caterpiller executive says

"Housing construction dropped sharply in the U.S., and the recent reversal in mortgage rates is unlikely to revive activity much this year," according to the company's forecast. It predicts housing starts to decline to about 1.75 million units in 2007.

Here is Washington Mutual executive says

"This is about the most difficult environment we've seen in the mortgage banking industry since the early to mid-90s," Steve Rotella, president and chief operating officer, said Wednesday in a conference call with analysts.

D.R. Horton offered buyers $120,000 in savings last month at the Tuscan Estates in the Elk Grove area near Sacramento. A Pulte development near there advertises homes valued between $456,000 and $654,000. And Beazer Homes USA Inc. offered no monthly payments for six months at Fieldstone Meadows in Folsom, Calif.

Citigroup economist Steven Wieting said, "It's possible the price statistics are not reflecting the incentives." In a recent report, Wieting wrote, "In August, the median new home sales price fell 1.3 percent. Building 'incentives' are probably much larger."

When come what they really means always read the 10Q and 10K where they have to discolse the business condition.

TV anywhere

I recently baught Slingbox to watch the TV anywhere. I think its a great tool for anyone who is on the go and for the family to share the content across the various places.

Things like I can show our kids birthday party to my brother in India live. Amaizing! isn't it?

Not only that, you are waiting on the Airport, your kids are boaring, hook this up with wi-fi and you are just like in your home.

Let see their Business Perspective, with this kind of box, I can see people will watch more and more TV, rather that only surfing and chating. With life so busy and hactic, it hard to find the slot to watch the TV. Earlier we had a TiVo so we can record the program, but there is nothing new, you could have done the same with VCR, DVD Recorder. But this will bring you to see live TV. This will happy TV advertisements publishers, Cable operator. I don't see they will raise any issue with SlingMedia as long as they provide one connection at a time.

What you need is to get the Laptop and find the wireless connection. In couple of year, you will find plenty of free wireless connection, as company like Google already plan to make San Francisco Wireless, Mountain View, Sunnyvale already free wireless available. Verizon off wireless connection anywhere you go in Metro area for 50bucks. So you can have your laptop on in your car and have your family watch live TV.

So far I feel good to have a little gadget like this.

Another free lunch

Today, Bank of America declared that they will allow investor to trade free, yes FREE, by Feb 2007, Eastern state like NY,NJ, CT is already started.

http://www.bankofamerica.com/investing/

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=as7tPSHtD7Sw&refer=home

I can sense here what all the online services looking for "Advertisement Revenue". Basically, they all want to attract more hit to their site so that they can sell the advertisement, not a bad idea, at all, considering Google buyout Youtube.com (2 yr old company) for $1.6B, the only reason is they got 100m hit everyday.

Other interesting thing I like about this annoucement is Gorilla Marketing, they only rollout the services to Eastern State, so by the time everybody know they have the service and infrastructure ready. This is exactly what youtube.com did, no major advertisement.

With this annoucement, discount broker like etrade, TDWH, etc are under pressure. They have to follow the suite or they have to provide better services to the investor. I can clearly see the company Zocco.com, who annouced free trade 2 days back, will have trouble of serviving.

Other online services like Yahoo Voip just annouced they they let people to call India for free on the day of Diwali, and significant lower rate during the period of Diwali (1 week). Another way to attract visitor.

But hey, I like this idea and it make lots of sense.

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