It wasn't all that long ago..........

...........that "housing starts" were a key driver for the U. S. economy.  Some people (me) will tell you that we probably should have had a mild recession in +/- 2003.  To avoid that, and to keep the number of housing starts growing, politicians expanded the pool of eligible home buyers by including those who couldn't afford one.   We all paid the price for that decision in 2007-2009.   Just didn't know that the home construction rebound would take this long and be this slow.

enlargeable chart may be found here