Has home building declined in recent years? The answer to that question is yes. In fact, is has reached its lowest rate in 17 years.

What this means is that the number of homes or apartments being built will be the fewest since the Second World War. The reason for this is simple, not that many people are willing to build a home and banks are a bit hesitant whether or not to approve a loan.

In some states, there was a decline of more than 20 percent for new housing permits. This means contracts don’t have that many jobs and there is not that much money collected from real estate taxes and building permits which contribute to local revenue.

A good example is the state of California which lost more than 220,000 jobs in the past 2 years. This translates to a loss of about $30 billion to the state’s economy. Some companies have gone bankrupt with others forced to close down their projects.

So what should people do now? Well a lot of experts advise consumers to tighten their belts and then wait till the smoke clears before they consider building a new home. If you have the money, you could buy a homes sine many are up for sale especially when a lot of them are foreclosed and now owned by the bank. If you don’t have a lot of cash, make sure you save enough money to save it from being foreclosed.

Since the property of most homes has also gone down, many of the current homeowners can’t even make a profit if they decide to sell it now in hopes of building a new one.

For those who are renting, continue paying for it because it is cheaper to own until maybe you have save enough to consider building your own home. In most places, annual rent is still less than 3% of the acquire price and mortgage rates are 6.5% which makes it cost more than double to try and borrow money to build a home.

Analysts believe that the decline in home building may be dramatic but it is as bad as you think because it is simply a market reaction to recent building which went way ahead of new household formation. What this simply means is that more houses were built than people could actually buy. The question on everyone’s mind now is how long before things are on the up trend.

Many people that it will take between two to three years for the market to stabilize so business will be back to normal by 2011. So again, if you have the money, there is a lot of houses that are now available in the market to buy and when these are sold, equilibrium is achieved and there will be a construction boom once again.

There is no doubt that the current financial crisis is the cause of the decline in home building. The good news is that things will change for the better in less than 5 years so in the mean time, those who are paying for a home should sit tight until the bailout and any other remedy the government is trying works. As for those who are renting, be patient because now is not the right time to consider building a home.

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Workers are laid off while some construction companies go bankrupt are two things that happen when there is a decline in home building. But if you think that they are the only ones affected, think again because it creates a domino effect.

Aside from those working in the construction company, those who supply the construction materials like the lumber yards and steel mills are also affected because they will not be able to sell that much compared to the last month or even last year which is why they could pose little or no growth at all when it is time to report their corporate earnings.

On a national level, there has been an increase in the number of people who are unemployed which happens to be its highest in 7 years. Just last month, 159,000 people lost their jobs and 22% of them came from the construction industry.

Naturally, such massive job losses will affect consumer spending since people will tighten their belts even further rather than buying something they like from the store.

If a house is going to be built, the homeowner is required to get a permit. This will give him the right to build on the property and is also used by the government an indicator of future building activity. If there is a decline, cities that issue these permits will also lose a certain amount of revenue thus they will not earn that much from construction as they have done so in the past for projects that they plan.

Just to show you how bleak it is, overall permits for the month of September this year in the Midwest, South and West declined by 9.8 percent, 9.9 percent and 12.7 percent, respectively.

The only one who did well was the Northeast after a recent code change in New York City but that just offset the losses it experienced in the two previous months.

These figures are important because housing does contribute to the GDP or gross domestic product of the country and since there is a slump right now, it is only natural that it has a negative effect on the economy.

But what is surprising is the fact that the decline in home building as well as the sale or resale or homes for the first time contributed to the US recession. Back in 2000 to 2001, this was blamed on the burst of the dot-com bubble or the attacks of 9/11.

Although we recovered from that and experienced growth over the 7 year period, some say that this is normal because the recession is part of the business cycle. The economy expands, slows down and then recovers. Yes people will lose jobs and some businesses will go bankrupt.

Should only the strong survive during these trying times? No because the country has experience a recession countless times and some feel that we didn’t learn our lessons from the past which is why we are here again.

Have we learned from our mistakes? Even if the $700 billion bailout plan works, some say no because it is bound to happen again unless radical changes in the system are done. The same goes for the decline in home building because maybe we should have only made homes equal to the demand but that in reality is hard to accomplish.