I wonder how much Fed Cuts Lending Rate: Dow Closes Up 233 Points impacts the rate of New Home Construction that is Plunging :

"…The bottom isn’t here. It’s not even in sight yet,” said Richard F. Moody, chief economist with Mission Residential, a real estate investment firm in Austin, Tex.

Builders and developers are scaling back as Americans are finding it more difficult and more expensive to obtain mortgages. And as credit standards tighten across the entire lending industry, mortgage companies are finding it difficult to raise cash and to sell their loan portfolios."

That's not good news for the architects that I know - you don't sell many plans if no one can borrow money to build anything.

"…New-home construction fell everywhere except in the Northeast, where it increased 6.1 percent at a seasonally adjusted annual rate, compared with last July. On an unadjusted basis, however, construction in the Northeast fell.

In the Midwest, the adjusted rate of construction dropped 17.5 percent. In the South, it fell 26.3 percent; in the West, 21.5 percent.

Economists worry about a ripple effect if the credit market gets tighter, cutting off loans for more individuals and corporations. Stricter borrowing conditions could cause home sales to fall even more, which could in turn depress prices further. And the effect of falling home prices could cut into consumer spending, which would harm economic growth."

I looked at the visit count using the top 5 house plans sites in Google (query = "house plans") and this is what it shows traffic in visits is mostly static:

But what's more telling is the Engagement Score is way, way down for all the sites which implies sales are way down and interest is …down:

According to Compete the Attention Score is the total time spent on a domain as a percentage of the total time spent online by all U.S. internet users.
See Full Description.   In other words, the average internet visitor to houseplans.com, architectualdesigns.com, globalhouseplans.com, thehousedesigners.com or coolhouseplans.com is about about 45% less interested in Architectual House Plans than they were a year ago.

Interestingly, the traffic to top Bankruptcy Sites (that resolved to domains) was overall sharply up:

And Attention of the Average Visitor is way up from a year ago:

All while People Visits to Forclosure sites went up sharply from last year:

Overall, about 30% more visitors (people) are going to the top 5 Foreclosure Sites this year than the same time last year.

But let's try one more thing… if interest in "house plans" is really lower due to the market conditions than interest in "home builders" ought to be way down…right?

Well, take a look a this - I took the top 5 home builders from Google that Compete had data on and look what I found:

The interest of the average visitor to home plan builder sites is roughly half of what it was a year ago!  What does that tell us?

The Housing Market is weak….very weak.  It's going to take a lot more than traffic and even well designed websites that are search optimized to sell house plans.

That's why I have tried to point my clients in the direction of Social Networks and increasing the value they offer to potential buyers; but, it may be too late in some cases.