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The following data indicates that, "in the best of times", new housing starts at a rate of about 2 million per year, was enough to supply, albeit, at rising prices, speculators and second home buyers with 760,000 of the 2 million homes built, and of course, these purchasers did not all buy new homes.

Home ownership reached 68 percent of all households recently, and is now declining....so you should deduct your demand "forecast", by one third, and if you concede that purchases by speculators and second home buyers will drop by at least 50 percent in a market of declining demand and price, drop another 380,000 units from your upper end estimate of 2 mllion. These adjustments bring your population driven demand forecast down to one million new units "needed".

Now....consider that dropping new housing starts in half will effect a negative ripple throughout the economy, as will rising interest rates. Consider that the U.S. Treasury is the largest short term debtor in the world. It has issued a huge sum of short term, "Arm" like debt at low rates, that it will be compelled to refinance at higher rates. Consider that the U.S. is nearing a $3 trillion "run up" in new debt, on top of $5.5 trillion in prior debt, in just seven years! The previous debt service cost, in a low interest rate environment was only $318 billion from the annual federal budget.

The point is, that all of this debt demand will keep interest rates high, even if the dollar was strong enough to compete with rising EURO central bank interest rates, which it isn't. The Fed must match all future EURO interest rate increases, in order to lure foreign investors into rising sums of U.S. Treasury bonds.

Consider that no one has to own a home, let alone two or more, and that you have no idea how many existing second homes are owned by non-speculators, and that we can only guess how many newly started of planned to be built homes will end up in unsold inventory, to further dampen your one million per year, home creation projection.

You can't know how many foreclosures and bankruptcies in the now accelerating climate of default, will push new foreclosures on the market to compete, at low prices with retail MLS inventory, or the effect on price that this pressure on inventory and retail prices, will have....<b>or how many folks will no longer qualify to purchase homes because of poorer credit scores, unemployment, or bankruptcy.</b>

Would you invest in industries that you claimed would be supported, at a level of at least 1.25 million housing starts, for the next seven years? That is an optimistic forecast that leaves home builders to build and market into declining demand and prices, a building rate that is only 5/8 of the current rate, AT BEST!!

During the 1930's depression, my grandfather worked for a local gas untility co. He supported, and housed his wife and three kids, his in-laws, and their son. There is nothing that precludes households "doubling up", if the economy declines the way I expect that it will, in the coming years. I see nothing in your post that "stands up", given the fundamentals faced by the U.S. in the near future. We live in a bankrupted country with a near worthless fiat paper currency, that has not begun to erode, the way that gold and silver buyers, and the folks who hold oil reserves in the ground, expect that it will.