Waiting to exhale
The people have spoken. The country's top three priorities for Congress and President Obama are the economy (83 percent), jobs (81 percent) and terrorism (80 percent), according a new poll by the Pew Research Center. Next on the list are securing Social Security (66 percent), improving education (65 percent), securing Medicare (63 percent) and reducing the budget deficit (60 percent).
Yet, Congress has been consumed over the past year with those things at the bottom of Americans' priority list: reducing health care costs (57 percent), providing health insurance to the uninsured (49 percent) and global warming (28 percent).
The multifamily engine revs and we wait.
We wait for banks to begin lending. We wait for business to begin hiring. We wait for renters to emerge from shared environments and strike out on their own.
"We desperately need lenders to begin financing apartment communities again," said NAHB chief economist David Crowe. "The vacancy rate for apartments is elevated now, but as the economy recovers and jobs return, the people who've been doubling up with relatives and friends will want a place of their own -- and there may not be one available."
Don't hold your breath. The collapse of the housing bubble created this
