http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/reports.html
http://www.berkshirehathaway.com/2011ar/2011ar.pdf
BERKSHIRE HATHAWAY INC. 2011 ANNUAL REPORT
...
Last year, I told you that “a housing recovery will probably begin
within a year or so.” I was dead wrong. We have five businesses whose
results are significantly influenced by housing activity. The
connection is direct at Clayton Homes, which is the largest producer
of homes in the country, accounting for about 7% of those constructed
during 2011.
Additionally, Acme Brick, Shaw (carpet), Johns Manville (insulation)
and MiTek (building products, primarily connector plates used in
roofing) are all materially affected by construction activity. In
aggregate, our five housing-related companies had pre-tax profits of
$513 million in 2011. That’s similar to 2010 but down from $1.8
billion in 2006.
Housing will come back – you can be sure of that. Over time, the
number of housing units necessarily matches the number of households
(after allowing for a normal level of vacancies). For a period of
years prior to 2008, however, America added more housing units than
households. Inevitably, we ended up with far too many units and the
bubble popped with a violence that shook the entire economy.
That created still another problem for housing: Early in a recession,
household formations slow, and in 2009 the decrease was dramatic.
That devastating supply/demand equation is now reversed: Every day we
are creating more households than housing units. People may postpone
hitching up during uncertain times, but eventually hormones take
over. And while “doubling-up” may be the initial reaction of some
during a recession, living with in-laws can quickly lose its allure.
At our current annual pace of 600,000 housing starts – considerably
less than the number of new households being formed – buyers and
renters are sopping up what’s left of the old oversupply. (This
process will run its course at different rates around the country; the
supply-demand situation varies widely by locale.) While this healing
takes place, however, our housing-related companies sputter, employing
only 43,315 people compared to 58,769 in 2006. This hugely important
sector of the economy, which includes not only construction but
everything that feeds off of it, remains in a depression of its own. I
believe this is the major reason a recovery in employment has so
severely lagged the steady and substantial comeback we have seen in
almost all other sectors of our economy.
Wise monetary and fiscal policies play an important role in tempering
recessions, but these tools don’t create households nor eliminate
excess housing units. Fortunately, demographics and our market system
will restore the needed balance – probably before long. When that day
comes, we will again build one million or more residential units
annually. I believe pundits will be surprised at how far unemployment
drops once that happens. They will then reawake to what has been true
since 1776: America’s best days lie ahead.