Real Estate. Economics. Business
The first snow of the season finally arrived in the Twin Cities. The snow was wet and sticky and was still clinging to many of the trees in the area three days later. Medina is absolutely beautiful at all times of the year, but it is particularly beautiful in the winter.
Country lane in Medina, MN:
Looking East as the sun rises:
This is one of the more beautiful barns in the entire Northwest Hennepin county area. It sits on the Medina Golf and Country Club’s 2nd hole.
Forbes has published an interview with Bob Nardelli, CEO of Home Depot. (To see how Home Depot tracks with some of the national home builders see this chart comparing Home Depot (HD) with Lennar (LN).
In the interview, Nardelli talks about how they were originally planning for a 5-7% decline in housing and not the 20-40% decline (in sales volume – not price appreciaton) that most parts of the country have seen.
He mentions that they national builders pulled back faster than ever before. This has been a point of conversation I’ve had with others. The national home builders, at least operationally, are trying to model the likes of Wal-Mart and Intel with Just in time inventory and manufacturing. That’s in part way the pull back and slow down has been so rapid. The deceleration on the part of the home builders has been remarkable.
