An ominous report in the NY Times today; the US Economy is slowing down ...way down ..... being pulled by the rapidly deflating housing market. Economists were expecting a growth rate of 2%.
"The Commerce Department reported this morning that the nation’s gross domestic product expanded at an annual rate of just 1.6 percent from July through September. That preliminary estimate compares with a rate of 2.6 percent in the second quarter and the robust 5.6 percent pace recorded in the first. The figures are seasonally adjusted".
"A major question hanging over both the economy and the political campaign this fall has been just how severely the slump in housing would drag down growth. The Commerce Department’s report, which will be revised twice in coming months as more complete data becomes available, shows that the drag was indeed substantiall.
I wonder how my architectural house plan clients are doing in terms of sales of architectural house plans? I used to have access to more of that data, right now I have one client like that, but don't work with the other 3 or 4 that I used to have - all have the same basic issues with their sites - and all of them wanted to cash in on the Internet ...and none of them really were and I doubt any of those types of sites are doing all that well.
My Keywordmax data for this client show a slowdown both in clicks to the site and sales - but I don't know if it can be traced back to worsening state of the US Economy.
However, it makes sense that Internet sales of Architectural House Plans would go down because Residential construction is going down the tubes right now .....and that means ..people are finding it harder to build their dream home".
"Residential construction plunged by nearly one-fifth in the quarter, the steepest decline in 15 years. That trend alone knocked 1.1 percentage points off the overall figure for economic growth. As recently as the spring of 2005, that sector was a major motor of growth, adding more than one percentage point to the overall figure".
Interesting...... I certainly won't be sorry to see THD go down the tubes - they deserve it - one of former clients that just did not get it.
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