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Weakening Seen in Economic Growth Data

April 17, 2013 by Leave a Comment

Other data released on Tuesday suggested that the housing market recovery was losing momentum, even though builders started work on new homes at an annual rate of more than one million units for the first time since June 2008.

“For the Fed, it’s business as usual,” said Millan Mulraine, senior economist at TD Securities. “There is not likely to be an acceleration in growth momentum that would cause them to shift their policy stance anytime soon.”

The Labor Department said its Consumer Price Index edged down 0.2 percent last month as gasoline prices tumbled, unwinding some of February’s 0.7 percent increase. Economists expected a flat reading.

Underscoring the benign inflation environment, consumer prices rose just 1.5 percent in the 12 months through March — the smallest increase since July. Prices increased 2 percent year-on-year in February.

Stripping out volatile energy and food costs, the so-called core C.P.I. was up only 0.1 percent after gaining 0.2 percent in February. That lowered the 12-month increase to 1.9 percent in March from 2.0 percent in February.

A separate report from the Fed showed that production at the nation’s factories decreased 0.1 percent after advancing 0.9 percent in February. The decline was fairly broad-based, with output dropping for primary metals and electronics. Automobile assembly, however, increased.

Despite the factory weakness, overall industrial production rose 0.4 percent last month, mainly because of a jump in utilities’ output.

Economic data for January and February have suggested growth accelerated in the first quarter after activity almost stalled in the final three months of 2012.

But in a replay of the previous two years, the economy appears to have hit a speed bump at the end of the quarter, with data ranging from employment to retail sales and manufacturing weakening significantly in March.

Much of the weakness is blamed on higher taxes and deep government spending cuts put in place in Washington.

“We definitely see the second quarter slowing from the first in terms of overall growth across many of the sectors. Obviously, the drag from fiscal policy is playing into this a little bit,” said Erik Johnson, senior United States economist at IHS Global Insight.

A third report from the Commerce Department showed that housing starts rose 7.0 percent last month to a 1.04 million-unit annual rate, the highest in nearly five years.

The increase in home building was driven by the volatile multifamily sector, while groundbreaking for single-family units fell. In addition, permits for future construction tumbled 3.9 percent — reversing February’s gain.

That suggested a slowdown in housing activity, coming on the heels of a report on Monday that showed a third consecutive decline in homebuilders’ confidence in April.

“The decline in single starts and permits is consistent with recent hints the housing recovery has lost some momentum,” said David Sloan, senior economist at 4Cast Ltd.

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/17/business/economy/weakening-seen-in-economic-growth-data.html?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Bucks Blog: Thursday Reading: Those Plentiful Weight-Loss Myths

January 31, 2013 by Leave a Comment

January 31

Thursday Reading: Those Plentiful Weight-Loss Myths

Those plentiful weight-loss myths, Toyota recalls one million cars for air bag and wiper problems, keeping track of the pennies on your smartphone and other consumer-focused news from The New York Times.

Article source: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/01/31/thursday-reading-those-plentiful-weight-loss-myths/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Bucks Blog: Few Consumers Review Their Credit Reports

December 13, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Only about one in five consumers review their credit reports each year, according to a new report from the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau.

The three major credit reporting bureaus each have files on about 200 million consumers, mostly containing information provided by credit card lenders. But only about 44 million people obtain their reports annually, based on data from 2010 and 2011, the report said.

“That is a shame,” Richard Cordray, the agency’s director, said in a call with reporters on Wednesday. Examining the reports each year, he said, is the best way to detect and correct errors that can harm a consumer’s credit rating, and he urged consumers to do so. Credit reports are the basis for consumers’ three-digit credit score, which can determine if they get a favorable rate on a loan, or if they get a loan at all.

The report is the latest on consumer credit reporting from the bureau, which is charged with overseeing the credit reporting industry. In October, the agency began accepting complaints about credit reporting firms.

The latest report suggests that many consumers don’t realize they can obtain a free copy of their credit report once each year from each of the three major credit reporting bureaus — TransUnion, Equifax and Experian.

About 16 million people obtained free disclosures from annualcreditreport.com, the Web site that the three big bureaus are required to maintain. By staggering their requests for the reports, consumers can obtain one every four months.

By comparison, 26 million people obtained their reports though various credit monitoring services, which generally require consumers to pay for access to the information.

About one million received copies of their reports directly from the credit bureaus after receiving an adverse decision on an application for credit, and another 500,000 people obtained them in other ways, including fraud alerts or from states where the reports are free by law.

The agency’s report also raised concerns about how effective the bureaus are at resolving consumer complaints about errors they find in their reports. The exact level of inaccuracies in credit reports is in dispute. A report soon to be issued by the Federal Trade Commission is expected to help shed light on that issue, the consumer agency’s report notes.

But the report did note that the credit bureaus resolve only about 15 percent of complaints themselves, and pass the remainder on to the original bank or lender that furnished the data for review. While the complaint is passed along, information mailed in by consumers to help resolve inaccuracies, like written documentation, is often not forwarded to the reporting lender, the report found.

Have you tried to resolve an error in your credit report? What was your experience?

Article source: http://bucks.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/13/few-consumers-review-their-credit-reports/?partner=rss&emc=rss

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Bucks Blog: Site Posts Data on Real Estate Agent Success

September 30, 2011 by Leave a Comment

The real estate listing and brokerage site Redfin has added a tool that gives home sellers access to details about the performance of real estate agents in more than a dozen major markets.

The move continues the continuing Internet shake-up of the real estate world. Web sites like Trulia and Zillow, and local and regional players like streeteasy.com in the New York and New Jersey area, have empowered consumers by putting electronic information about sales and home values at their fingertips. Redfin says it is going a step further, by providing sales data linked to individual agents, to help sellers select a professional to market their home.

The tool can help sellers find agents who are active and who have had success in their specific neighborhood, said Glenn Kelman, Redfin’s chief executive. Using information from local multiple-listing services, where agents list the home they are representing for sale, the “Scouting Report” tool provides data on roughly one million agents, he said.

The tool isn’t comprehensive.

Various M.L.S. restrictions mean the data isn’t available in Redfin’s hometown of Seattle, for instance, nor in Palm Springs, Calif.; parts of Atlanta; California’s wine country; and Westchester County, in New York.

And because the data goes back three years at the most — a period when home sales have been slow — some agents may show no deals at all when you search by their name. But even so, Redfin is going beyond what has generally been available to consumers online, Mr. Kelman said. “Our goal in releasing this information is to help consumers make informed choices about which real estate agent to choose.”

In markets where the tool works, sellers can search for agents by name and see their current listings; how many homes the agent has sold in the last three years, or in the past year in some cases; where the homes are located on a map; photos of the homes; the median sales price; the average number of price cuts for each property; and other details.

Scouting information is available for the following markets served by Redfin: Phoenix; Portland, Ore.; San Francisco and the Bay Area; Sacramento, San Diego and Los Angeles; Chicago; Long Island, N.Y.; Austin and Dallas; parts of Atlanta; Boston; Washington, D.C.; Denver; and Las Vegas.

The tool provides information about all agents in many of the markets, Mr. Kelman said, not just those who work directly for Redfin or who partner with it. (Partner agents work for other firms, but agree to offer commission discounts to Redfin clients.) Some markets offer information on all agents, even if they have no affiliation with Redfin.

Mr. Kelman says M.L.S. data is generally accurate and up to date, but if an agent finds inaccuracies, the site outlines a procedure to have the information corrected.

“I think the best real estate agents are going to love this,” he said.

The service is free to users. Redfin pays for use of the M.L.S. data and earns money from commissions on the sale and listings of homes, Mr. Kelman said.

Do you think information like that in the scouting report is helpful in selling your home? And if you sell real estate for a living, please let us know in the comments how accurate the data is on you.

Article source: http://feeds.nytimes.com/click.phdo?i=209fdca3c0c99f75ec2f2d37e6a209d3

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