With a decline in home building thanks to the financial crisis, the answer is yes. This is because without anything to build, these people will go out of business.

But is that the only reason? The answer is no. Thanks to the decline in home building and the law of supply and demand, the price of lumber is at its lowest in 5 years. This means you can buy more right now together with other construction materials you will need so you can accomplish a lot with your budget.

Because of the slump, you are to find a reputable and trusted contract right away so the construction time could be faster than you expected.

With that, the first step is to plan you budget. You have to find out how much it will cost to build your home. There are ways to make it cheaper like choosing a home that does not have many corners. If you want to have corners, stick to a rectangle or square.

Another factor is where the lot is located. If you have had this for a long time, chances are the area is already well developed. If it is secluded like somewhere in the mountains, be ready to shoulder a little more because it is going to take awhile to clear the trees and remove the dirt from the ground.

The next thing you have to do is pick the right contractor for the job. As mentioned earlier, the building decline will make it easy for you to find these professionals because they do this for a living. You just have to see which one is offering the best deal.

Before you select the team, you should already have an idea how you want your home to look like. You can look at magazines, books, the web or even houses that are in your neighborhood. If you want to look different from the rest, you will have to convey your ideas to an architect so the blue prints can be drawn up and this can be showed to the contractor.

The last thing you have to do is sign a written contract with the contractor and anyone else involved in the project. If everyone agrees to it, then there should not be any problems. You should just be ready to amend it in the event that some problems happen along the way because it always does due to many different factors.

Your dream home will be built in a few months even if there is a decline in the home building industry. After all, you have the money, the plan and the people so you have everything needed to turn that into a reality. What is even better is that because the market is slowing down, this means cheaper building materials, cheaper labor, and faster construction times.

For those who don’t want to build a home but have the money to spare, why don’t consider buying one instead. You just have to see the place first to find out if it is worth buying because you may have to do a lot of repairs and restoration first which could be equivalent to what you may be paying for when you build your home. If that is the case, just take advantage of decline in home building and wok from the ground up.

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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.