housing starts are down for many reasons... the first being that the younger generations are less interested in purchasing a home. they are more interested in the experiences and travel and the comitment to a long term mortgage simply turns them off.. housing is also down because lenders are raising rates faster than the fed is, who wants to buy a home in that environment? not I... then there is the whole backlog of forclosure homes banks are still working on liquidating... which in turn is causing new home starts to dip because the forclosure market is taking a lot people who might have built a new home because the priceing for existing homes are more than competitive than buying a new home...

I see the housing market come into correction because pricing has exceeded demand, not to mention there is still a huge supply of homes. Prior to the crash of 07, builders were building homes faster than you could sell them the land to put them on... they didn't count on the crash, so they over built...

I see the economy slowing, in the sense that instead of the forcasted 2-3% increase we will likely see 1-2% for FY17, and a possible 2% for FY18... we are in for several more years of flat to slow growth. the crash recovery was faster than it should have been and now the economy is unsure of where to go.. that's where it gets a bit scary, it wouldn't take much to move the direction either way... a bust out and a global expansion of growth, or a nasty depression...