Software Training

Do you need to learn a new skill to be more marketable? Check out this very affordable option: http://www.lynda.com/home/otl.aspx

Money Saving opportunity from Clark Howard

No one likes paying for shipping, especially on things like toothpaste and trash bags. That’s why Alice always delivers to your door free. Get the convenience of online without the guilt of shipping fees. Alice has you covered.

http://alice.com/

Economic Development in the Southeast U.S.

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB124485634480511841.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

The Southeast has attracted an array of corporate facilities recently. In February, Asbury Automotive Group Inc., a major chain of national auto retailers, relocated to metro Atlanta from New York. In recent months, Tennessee announced three projects, all valued at more than $1 billion each, by units of Wacker Chemie AG, Volkswagen AG and Hemlock Semiconductor Group. North Carolina last week welcomed a new Apple Inc. data warehouse.

Meanwhile, state economic development officers say they are pursuing a higher number of relocation prospects. "The level of competition on retention, expansion and relocation projects has become more intense," said North Carolina Deputy Secretary of Commerce Dale Carroll.

Development agencies across the Southeast are therefore pushing their recruiting machines into overdrive. Gwinnett County, where NCR is moving its headquarters, revamped its development strategy in 2007 to prevent the slowing of the area's red-hot job growth. Nick Masino, the Gwinnett Chamber of Commerce's vice president for economic development, says the organization hired seven new staff and created national and global marketing teams.

Since then, the number of companies the agency is courting soared to 36 this year compared with seven in the first six months of 2007. The Gwinnett Chamber has won five projects this year—including a 75-job expansion of Habasit America, a Suwanee, Ga., belting company, and a 300-job unit of California's YesVideo Inc., which transfers VHS to DVD. The agency says it brought at least 5,000 jobs to the county in the past 24 months. Half the companies it is pursuing are based in the Midwest.

College Grads shun Wall Street for Washington

http://www.foxbusiness.com/story/personal-finance/lifestyle-money/college-grads-shun-wall-street-washington/

EEOC sues John Wieland Homes alleging racial discrimination

http://www.ajc.com/services/content/business/stories/2009/04/30/Wieland_eeoc_discrimination_suit.html

The suit, filed Thursday by the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, alleges Wieland assigned black sales agents to developments based on the race of the surrounding community. The practice resulted in black agents earning significantly less than white counterparts, who were assigned to areas where higher-priced homes were sold, the suit claims.

Wieland video on how to run a business

Fix Housing First Bill

Here is a link to an article re: the Fix Housing First Bill:
http://www.atlantarealestateforum.com/support-the-fix-housing-first-bill-6469/

Video: Hope for Housing Market?

Outplacement Resources and Resume Assistance

I spoke with Drake, Beam and Morin last year to get information on support services available through their firm. They provided some detailed information and I posted it on November 26, 2007. Please use the archive section at the bottom of the main page or use the "post label" search option to find the information. Prices may have changed a little but should not be substantially different.

Affects of unemployment on the family

I am posting this because unemployment and, the fear of pending unemployment, can be very hard on a family. This downturn in the housing industry has been lengthy and stressful for so many people. Those who work in lending, closings, construction, vendors, so many people from so many areas have suffered. Some of you who still have jobs are experiencing stress related to wondering how long it will last and what you will do if/when it ends. A spouse may or may not understand the stress you are suffering and how you are coping. You may not understand how the stress you are experiencing is affecting your family.

While this seminar is not designed specifically to address the issues surrounding unemployment, it is a resource you may find helpful.

INTIMATE ENCOUNTERS MARRIAGE SEMINAR

Intimate Encounters is a 12-week series designed by Dr. David & Teresa Ferguson to help couples develop the skills needed to identify each spouse's primary needs and to meet those needs in order to foster a more profoundly intimate marriage that blesses each spouse and glorifies God.  During Intimate Encounters couples learn how utilize their marriage to meet their emotional, relational, and physical needs.

If you are married, seriously dating, or engaged join Major Boglin , Don McLaughlin , and Ken Snell for this life changing series.  At a minimum, it will enhance your marriage.  If your relationship is really struggling, this series may save it.

The sessions will be held (beginning December 3) at 7:15 p.m. in room 106.

No registration fee is required for this series, but each couple is encouraged to buy an Intimate Encounters workbook for $16.

Click [HERE] to register for the seminar.

Click [HERE] for more information or to sign up.

If you have additional questions, call the Genesis Center for Christian Counseling at 770-399-6333.

http://www.nacofc.org/

Money Saving Web Sites – Help for the Christmas Budget

ConsumerMan: Stretch your holiday budget

Web sites offer smart consumers valuable tools to save a bundle

By Herb Weisbaum

msnbc.com

updated 4:52 p.m. ET, Thurs., Nov. 6, 2008

You don't need a crystal ball to predict that a lot of us will pinch pennies this holiday season. Survey after survey shows a significant number of shoppers plan to spend less on gifts this year.

Of course, we'll still buy presents – we'll just be a lot more aware of the price.

"If you have limited funds to work with, you really must shop smart this year," says Edgar Dworsky, founder of ConsumerWorld.org. "You want to buy when there's a sale, get an instant discount because of a promotion, then find a rebate."

Dworsky is a friend of mine and one of the most frugal shoppers I know. He uses the Internet to research products, compare prices and find bargains. He delights in finding super deals and sharing them with others.

This week he published a list of web sites that should help you stretch your holiday budget. Use these online tools, Dworsky says, and you should be able to spend less and get more for your money. Here are ConsumerWorld.org's sites for sore wallets.

SlickDeals.net & FatWallet.com
Here's where you'll find out about sales or other special offers that are not widely advertised. Each site has a "Hot Deals" forum where veteran bargain hunters share the money-saving offers they've discovered online or at brick-and-mortar stores.

The message board postings usually give more than just sale prices. You'll often find information about rebates and coupon codes. And the savings can be substantial. About a week ago he found a posting for a reconditioned Dyson vacuum cleaner (regular retail $400) for just $149.99.

"The best things tend to go quickly," he warns. "So when you find one of these unadvertised deals, you need to jump on it."

SundaySaver.com & SalesCircular.com
The Sunday newspaper is loaded with advertising inserts that let you know what's on sale at local stores. Maybe you don't get the paper. Maybe you threw out the circulars. No problem. These sites let you see those sale items. You can choose national retailers or limit your search to stores in your state.

Check out the section called "Free with Rebate" that lists products that don't cost you anything after you send in the mail in rebate form. These items range from software to glucose monitors. (Note: As we've warned in the past, rebates can be tricky. Stick to well-known retailers, send for the rebate right away, follow all the directions and keep copies of everything you put in the mail.)

SundaySaver.com has a "Black Friday Ads" section with a number of post-Thanksgiving sales already posted. For example, Sears will drop the price on a Sharp 46-inch 1080p LCD HDTV from $1,200 to $899 as an early bird special.

SalesCircular.com has a nice feature. It lets you search for specific categories of products, such as GPS units, digital cameras, MP3 players or sweaters.

PriceSpider.com
We all see sales every day. As Edgar puts it, "Sometimes the sale is great; sometimes the sale is just so-so. If you're not up on prices it's hard to tell."

Is that DVD player on sale for $399 really a good deal? Not if you know it sold for $299 a few weeks ago.

PriceSpider lets you check the price history for various items at hundreds of stores across the country for the last six months. Armed with this information,
you instantly become a smarter shopper.

I did a price check on a Sony DVD Recorder and found current prices ranging from $144 to $199. By looking at the graph, I could instantly see that the $144 price was a great deal. The chart showed the median price for this model had not been below $160 in the past six months.

DealAlerter.com
This is Dworsky's own site. It let's you know when the price drops on a product you want to buy. Dworsky created the site to help busy shoppers. "People don't have the time to keep checking week after week to see if the price has come down."

Using the site is easy. Start with the price comparison search engine. If the prices seem too high, set a lower target price and DealAlerter.com will check prices every day. If it finds the item at or below the target price, you'll get an email alert. You can set the site to search at one store or at the hundreds of online stores in its database.

Shipgooder.com
Many holiday gifts will need to be shipped to friends and loved-ones. You have a number of options, but prices vary greatly from service to service. Shipgooder.com lets you compare the cost of shipping that package via DHL, FedEx, UPS, the U.S. Postal Service and Purolator.

Just put in the "to" and "from" zip codes and the weight and in about a second you can see your various options, listed by carrier, based on delivery speed: next day, second day, third day and ground.

When I priced a 10-pound package from Seattle to Philadelphia, the second day delivery prices ranged from $9.80 to $52.06. In the past, I'd have to go to each carrier's site, punch in that information and then compare rates. This site is both a time saver and money saver.

A few more money-saving sites
In its November issue, ShopSmart magazine lists seven web sites that can help you find real deals fast. "We scoured the Web to come up with this short list of sites you can count on for great deals every time you shop," says editor-in-chief Lisa Lee Freeman.

More information


BBB: Online shopping tips


FTC: Holiday Shopping Tips

© 2008 msnbc.com

URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27579959/

Unemployment rate at 14-year high

CORRECTED: Job losses soar, jobless rate at 14-year high

I am posting this, not to discourage you, but to emphasize you will likely need to put careful thought and deliberate focus on your job search. Simply submitting resumes online will probably not result in the type of opportunity you are looking for, unless you have a very specific job skill. A top notch resume to accurately showcase your skills, a targeted job search and dedicated networking will be the keys to finding the type of opportunity you wish to find.

Even when unemployment rises, someone is being hired every day. More often than not, the person who is being hired found a way to get to a hiring manager and bypassed the thousand or so resumes that were submitted online.

You find a way to be that person!

Employers cut payrolls by 240,000 in October, much more severely than expected, while September registered the biggest monthly loss in jobs in nearly seven years, according to a government report on Friday that showed labor markets were sharply deteriorating.

REUTERS/Graphics

By Glenn Somerville
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - U.S. employers slashed an unexpectedly steep 240,000 jobs from payrolls last month and the jobless rate shot up to a 14-1/2-year high, the government said on Friday in a report underscoring the economy's steep slide.

The Labor Department also said job losses in September and August were deeper than previously thought. The economy shed 284,000 jobs in September, the most since November 2001 which was shortly after the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States, and lost 127,000 in August. That meant 179,000 more jobs were cut in August and September than previously thought.

So far this year 1.2 million jobs have been lost, 651,000 in the past three months alone, showing labor markets are crumbling faster and heightening chances of a deep recession.

"We have entered the phase of serious recession conditions. Unfortunately we will encounter more of this ...," said Richard DeKaser, chief economist for National City Corp in Cleveland.
Analysts said the bleak data could give further impetus to efforts on Capitol Hill to quickly craft a package of measures to help support the economy. President-elect Barack Obama was set to huddle with top economic advisers later in the day before holding his first news conference since being elected.

Wall Street economists had expected a loss of 200,000 nonfarm jobs in October and had looked for the jobless rate to move up to 6.3 percent from 6.1 percent in September.
Instead, the unemployment rate rose a steep four-tenths of a percent to 6.5 percent, the highest since March 1994.

"The 6.5 percent unemployment rate will only reinforce market talk of a peak in the unemployment rate above 8 percent," said Alan Ruskin, chief international strategist at RBS Greenwich Capital in Greenwich, Connecticut.

Still, the data was not as dire as some had feared.

While the dollar extended losses, U.S. stocks rose and prices for U.S. Treasuries turned lower.
"I think people were basically looking for a pretty weak number so it needed to be a tremendous surprise," said Thomas di Galoma, head of U.S. Treasury trading at Jefferies & Co. "It needed to be down 350,000 to really get the market rolling."

PAIN WIDESPREAD
The U.S. Federal Reserve has cut benchmark interest rates by 4.25 percentage points over the last 13 months, including 1 point last month alone, in an effort to buffer the economy from a deep housing slump and a widening credit crisis which has reverberated worldwide.Interest-rate futures prices imply a 64-percent perceived chance the Fed will lower its target overnight federal funds rate to 0.5 percent at its next policy meeting in December. That would be the lowest on records dating to July 1954.

In manufacturing alone, a whopping 90,000 jobs were cut in October -- reflecting in part 27,000 striking workers at Boeing Co. That followed a loss of 56,000 factory jobs in September.
Service-producing industries cut 108,000 jobs in October on top of 201,000 lost in September.
Earlier this year, job losses had been concentrated in the factory sector, but September marked the third month in a row that the vast services sector lost more jobs than manufacturing, a sign of the economy's widening woes.

Construction industries dropped 49,000 more jobs last month after eliminating 35,000 in September, many of them in specialty trades related to home building.

Average weekly hours of work held steady at 33.6 in October. At factories, the average workweek also held steady at 40.6 hours, while overtime was unchanged at 3.6 hours.

But the big drop in employment pulled down a measure of overall work effort by 0.3 percent.

(Additional reporting by Ros Krasny in Chicago and Burton Frierson in New York; Editing by James Dalgleish)

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/CORRECTED-Job-losses-soar-rb-13501267.html

Builder Implode A Meter

Where not to look for a job in construction :(
http://builder-implode.com/

Layoffs at John Wieland today

I have heard some of you were laid off today and I am truly sorry. There are posts throughout this blog that will help you locate resources and provide miscellaneous tidbits of information, such as job search expenses that are tax deductible.

All of us want and need for the housing market to rebound for a multitude of reasons. Not the least of which was my personal hope that no one else at Wieland would have to lose their job for anything other than voluntary reasons.

A speaker at the jobs ministry at my church gave us the advice that "any incident only has the importance we attach to it". For instance, if you decide the loss of a job is the end of the world for you then it may indeed be a cataclysmic event. If you decide the loss of a job is an opportunity to find something you enjoy as well or better than the job you lost, a chance to change careers, pursue education, etc. then they lay off will represent an opportunity. How you view your unemployment will affect how you perform in interviews and likely how quickly you will find another job.

Please look back through the posting archive at the very bottom and locate the post on social networking. Networking is key to locating another position and the Roswell United Methodist Church has a VERY active jobs networking group. Please check them out for moral support if nothing else.

I wish you all the best. Please post any comments you wish or email me.

Economy drops hammer on John Wieland Homes

By KEVIN DUFFY

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Friday, October 31, 2008

Construction has stopped on about half the John Wieland homes in metro Atlanta and the company's business is off sharply, the founder said Friday.

"Overall, our Atlanta business is down 60 percent from the best years," said John Wieland, chairman of Atlanta-based John Wieland Homes & Neighborhoods and perhaps Atlanta's best known homebuilder. "It may be a little while before it fully recovers."

Wieland said more houses are at the hold stage — incomplete but presentable — than ever before. He put the number at approximately 150. Those are houses that are little more than shells and will remain so for the time being.

"We are holding some of our homes at their current stages of construction while we get over the presidential election," Wieland said. "We have more homes at a hold stage now than we have had previously."

The company's Atlanta home sales were off 36 percent in fiscal year 2008, which ended in September. Closings totaled 350 compared to 547 in 2007.

Wieland Homes forecasts just 300 Atlanta home sales in fiscal year 2009, said Jennifer Nilsson, the director of corporate marketing.

The average sales price of a new Wieland Homes house is $550,000, so the company might be the largest in the metro Atlanta in terms of dollar volume, Wieland said.

Wieland Homes also builds in North Carolina, South Carolina and Tennessee. Its work force has been halved to about 350 since last year.

Wieland said the current slump is the worst he's seen in the three decades since Wieland Homes' founding. The company's struggles mirror the downturn in the metro area housing market.

"Overall, Atlanta's housing starts declined 60 percent and closings declined 40 percent during the 12-month period ending in September," said Eugene James, Atlanta division director for Metrostudy, which researches residential real estate.

"The pace of new-home starts has not been this slow in more than a decade," James said. "Builders have done the right thing by cutting back on production in response to declining demand, which, in turn, is returning the supply of homes to a more balanced level."

Excess housing inventory peaked in the second quarter of 2006 and has been slowly shrinking since, James said. The supply of lots will continue to rise until starts increase significantly, which may not happen until 2010, he said.

http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/business/stories/2008/10/31/wieland_homes_economy.html

 

Ask the Expert” Roundtables are back with 15 speakers!

Hello from RUMC Job Networking!

“Ask the Expert” Roundtables are back with 15 speakers!

Join us Monday Night, October 27th when we have 15 speakers at RUMC! This is one of our most popular and interactive events. We’ll have each of the speakers give you a 30 second pitch as to why you should be at their table. You then get to choose 3 of them.

We start at 6:00 pm with a free dinner and close around 9:15 pm. Go to www.RUMCjobnetworki ng.com for more information and directions. No RSVP is required.

We are excited to have all of our guest speakers. However, for the first time ever we’ve gotten commitment from Ruthie Powell of “Ruthie’s List” fame to join us Monday Night. The other 14 speakers and topics will be sent via email later this week via RUMC Yahoogroups in time for our meeting as we wrap up our confirmations.

Our last meeting we had over 155 job seekers in attendance. Also 112 job seekers took advantage of our dinner which focuses on developing your spiritual resume. With over 40 of our 130 volunteers on-site at each meeting we are excited to contribute to your job search. We have a great program for you on Monday Night and hope you can join us.

Please review this line up for Monday Night. We are experimenting with the timing of some of these activities causing some of the activities to overlap. We added Resume Reviewing to follow the Free Dinner so you can take advantage of both in the same room. We also have moved our resume reviewers to 6:00 pm and added a new Interview Discussion Room and the new Small Business Opportunity Discussion Room. See below:

1. 6:00 – 7:00 pm Free Dinner Program with Resume Reviews (7:00 – 7:30 pm). We have an individual contributor who is sponsoring our dinner Monday Night starting at 6:00 pm on “Developing your Spiritual Resume.” Volunteer leader Bob Kashey will lead you through some critical steps that will help you in your job search. The dinner is free but please arrive by 6:00 pm. Again, no RSVP is required. For those that attend dinner we will be offering resume reviews so you don’t have to rush out early.
2. 6:00 – 7:30 pm Resume Reviews. We have Recruiters and HR Professionals volunteering their time as Resume Reviewers that are anxious to go one-on-one with you.
3. 6:45 – 7:30 pm Interview Discussion Room. This is a brand new addition to our ministry and is run by Richard Kirby. We will have an informal drop-in format.
4. 6:45 – 7:30 pm Small Business Opportunity Discussion Room. This is also a brand new addition to our ministry and is coordinated by Bill Williams.
5. 7:30 – 9:15 pm “Ask the Expert” Program. Select 3 of our 15 guest speakers based on what you are most interested in. Bring a note pad to take notes!!
6. Industry Guide Access. We have over 65 off-site volunteers that will take one of your phone calls after the meeting. You get to select one of them based on the industry and company that they work for.

Do you need directions or more details? Go to www.RUMCjobnetworking.com.

Membership Codes
Do you need another reason to attend? We will be distributing Membership Codes for www.crossroadscareer.org which is a site that will walk you through the Six Steps in your Job Search. This website is a one of a kind resource that we are pleased to share with you – if you attend Monday Night.

See you Monday Night!

Jay Litton
Volunteer Leader
www.RUMCjobnetworking.com

Market Meltdown: Change Your Job Search Mindset

Market Meltdown: Change Your Job Search Mindset
Joe Turner 10/20/08

The current economic meltdown is just the tip of a much larger iceberg that will have far reaching economic implications for all of us here in the U.S. Tens of thousands of layoffs in and beyond the financial industry will only be the start of more sober times as companies across the country will be forced to rethink their future hiring plans.

One fact seems certain. All of these combined circumstances will have huge ramifications for job seekers. The failing economy and a constantly rising unemployment rate will require individuals to take a fresh approach to their job search.

Referencing the most recent economic crisis, Neil McNulty, Principal Recruiter, McNulty Management Group states, "The game has changed, but the rules remain the same; now, more than ever, job seekers need to change their mindset from looking for 'openings' to looking for 'opportunities. ' Opportunities are born out of crisis and chaos, and exist even in the worst economy."This means that you, as a job seeker, must look beyond job postings and move into marketing yourself to the managers of the companies and organizations who are experiencing problems that you can solve.

Here's how:
1. Change Your Mindset: Move away from being a passive job seeker and toward being an active problem-solver. Don't just rely on the Internet to find job openings. Scour the marketplace to find the hidden jobs that aren't advertised. Most jobs are not posted or advertised. The best jobs are often found through networking, word-of-mouth and informational interviews.
2. Stop Thinking of Yourself as Just an Assortment of Job Skills: See yourself as a product to package and market, and then create your own marketing campaign to find your desired job. This includes having a state-of-the- art resume and sharpening your interviewing skills.
3. Sell ROI: View yourself in terms of Return on Investment for an employer. See yourself as a mini-profit and loss center. Be prepared to demonstrate ways you have helped to positively impact the bottom line of your past or current employer. This means demonstrating ways you've helped make money or save money for an employer or clients. As employees, we all touch money. Some of us may be closer to it than others. Regardless, we must find ways to prove this in short "sound bites" when given the opportunity.

Remember, it's not about you, but about the organization itself. All communication with a prospective employer must answer the question, "What's in it for me (the employer)?" The road ahead will be littered with casualties; make no mistake about that.We could sit by and whine about the circumstances. We could wait for the government to initiate a "bailout" package that might somehow rescue the unemployed. Or, we could take charge of our own lives and power ourselves forward.

Joseph P. Kennedy said many years ago, "When the going gets tough, the tough get going." That statement is just as true today as it was then. Whether we're employed or not, we all have this rocky, tough economy in common. We can respond as victims of the economy or we can get tough, and get going. As a recruiter, Joe Turner has spent the past 15 years finding and placing top candidates in some of the best jobs of their careers. Author of "JobSearch Secrets Unlocked" and "Paycheck 911" , Joe has interviewed on radio talk shows and offers
<http://www.jobchangesecrets.com/> free insider job search secrets.

Job Networking Ministry at Roswell United Methodist Church (RUMC)

A button posted on the lower right side of this blog will enable you to join RUMC's Yahoo Group. Their group distributes an email "Daily Digest" of job openings in the metro area.

Job Networking Ministry at Roswell United Methodist Church (RUMC) located at 814 Mimosa Boulevard in Roswell, Georgia.

We focus on tending to the needs of job seekers and career changers. We meet every second and fourth Monday evening at the Dodson Youth Center starting at 7:30 pm and ending around 9:15 pm. If you arrive early at 6:00 pm you can take advantage of our new program "Developing You Spritual Resume".

We provide a Free Dinner that is sponsored by companies and individuals that want to contribute to your search. Then at 6:45 pm you can take advantage of:
- Resume Guides (recruiters who will review your resume)
- Our small group program (learn more at http://www.c3g.org/)
- And many other networking opportunities.

Before you leave, take advantage of our Industry Guides (a RUMC creation) where you get to select an employed church member to network with after the meeting based on the industry and company they are employed with.

Our main program at 7:30 pm typically has powerful guest speakers and programs that will provide practical strategies you can put to work the next day.We have one of the largest volunteer programs in the State of Georgia with over 110 employed RUMC volunteers. We are anxious to show you how we can help you personally in your job search.

For directions and more information, check us out at http://www.rumcjobnetworking.com/. Take a look at our Crossroads Career Partner website. We can help you with the best practices with the Key Six Steps. It is free to everyone because we have paid for your subscription as a service to you. You will need a membership key to log into the site as a career explorer. We provide these at no cost every meeting! Join us to learn how to find the hidden jobs and obtain the skills necessary for a successful job search. Remember, keep God part of your job search too. It makes no sense to do this alone!

Home Builder’s Hidden Time Bombs

October 17, 2008 9:28AM

By Elizabeth MacDonald

Housing starts in the US sank 6.3% in September to a seasonally adjusted rate of 817,000, the lowest level in 17 years. That's worse than economists had expected, with a consensus forecast of a 1.7% drop in home construction.

Moreover, economists expect further declines in the fourth quarter. Building permits, an indicator of future activity, fell 8.3% to a 786,000 annual rate.

The decline in housing starts–the third precipitous drop in a row–should help weed back existing housing inventories, however, all of this means the home builders remain under severe pressure. That includes Hovnanian (HOV: 4.88, -0.20, -3.93%), Centex Corp. (CTX: 10.85, -0.42, -3.72%), D.R. Horton (DHI: 6.78, -0.42, -5.83%), Lennar Corp. (LEN: 9.01, -0.65, -6.72%), Toll Brothers (TOL: 20.57, -0.93, -4.32%) and Pulte Homes (PHM: 10.55, -0.76, -6.71%).

More so as U.S.-regulated banks are rapidly getting out of home building. "This is, by far, the toughest time for home builders since World War II," said James Hamilton, an economics professor with UC San Diego. "It's really a phenomenal collapse in the market these past two years."

On top of all this, Standard & Poors lowered its credit ratings on seven homebuilders in the last three months, and had cut 11 in the preceding quarter. Large homebuilders–like D.R. Horton, Lennar Corp. and Pulte Homes-are working furiously to cut back production to levels last seen in 2000 and 2001, while others have retreated as far as 1994.

Supply Glut Socks the Home Builders

The National Association of Realtors says that inventories are at a supply of 10.4 months, the highest level in 18 years. The US Census Bureau releases new home sale and supply data, with data dating back to 1963. As of August 2008, there was 10.9 months of supply, down slightly from the peak of 11.2 months seen in March of this year. August marked the sixth consecutive month of double digit months of inventory, a trend that has never happened dating back to 1963.

Previous highs of 11.6 months of supply were made in April 1980, with a few other months of double-digit supply in 1981. In short, the current levels of inventory are unprecedented, warns Meredith Whitney of Oppenheimer Equity Research.

To wipe out the supply glut in housing, builders will have to pump out just 800,000 houses annually for two years, Merrill Lynch says. That's about half of the going rate up until recently.

House Price Declines Hurt

Housing futures imply a housing price peak-to-trough drop of 22% by November 2008, a drop of 29% by November 2009, and a drop of 33% by 2010. Under this scenario home prices would return to levels last seen about eight years ago, essentially wiping out nearly a decades' worth of home price appreciation.

Home Builders' Ugly Debt Picture

The average leverage of investment grade home builders, as measured by debt to earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization, could grow to four times in late 2007, from a current average of 1.8 times.

Moody's Investors Service has already reported that a worse-than-expected housing slump has left home builders with less cash flow to cover debt interest, and some ratings could be cut if that trend continues.  

Cash flow is the key to reducing debt and interest expense, but companies have had a harder time boosting cash flow than in previous downturns, Moody's said.

Home Builders' Hidden Time Bombs

There are hidden time bombs on the home builders' balance sheets–off balance sheet debt, which could keep the home building sector dark for a while longer.

Specifically, many home builders entered into land deals with partners, but then shoved billions of dollars in debt from those deals into off-balance sheet vehicles, debt that could come back to bite their stocks.

Put that debt back onto their balance sheets, already underwater with an ocean liner of debt, and the companies' dirt-cheap book values fall deeper in the hole.

Here's how it works. Many large builders took minority stakes in joint ventures, which let them stockpile land for future needs while keeping billions in debt off their balance sheets. If they don't make sales, if they can't move that land, they're still very likely on the hook for their share of that off-balance sheet debt.

Alisa Guyer Galperin, an analyst at the Center for Financial Research & Analysis, figures that 13 of the country's biggest homebuilders on average have debt to capital ratios that look way uglier with this off balance sheet debt factored in, as much as 977 basis points higher than typically reported.

Why Debt Ratios Matter

This is why investors should care about higher debt to capital ratios. A company with high debt-to-capital ratios faces higher costs, like interest, on these debts that can suck free cash flow out of a company, cash that could go toward expanding an operation (yes taking on debt can also help pay to grow a company, but at a big cost-especially if management is poor).

High debt can weigh on a company and increase its default risk.

The Center for Financial Research & Analysis figures that Lennar, one of the country's biggest home builders out of Miami, Fla, and NVR, a homebuilder in Reston, Va., have the most off-balance sheet debt. The Center also adds that NVR in each of the last three years bought developed lots from a company controlled by a board member-did it get a fair price for shareholders?

Homebuilders may be held responsible for their share of joint venture debt guarantees, based on their pro rata share of the joint venture or the JV's specific recourse agreements. The accounting rules are really loose here-the homebuilders themselves get to decide whether or not they are the prime beneficiaries of an off balance sheet deal, and so whether they need to book the debt on their balance sheets.

The Center's Guyer Galperin has estimated that Lennar is on the hook for up to $910 mn of $5.6 bn in debt through partnerships not on its books. Lennar and other home builders are already fighting with lenders that are stamping their feet to force it pay off its share of their partnerships' total outstanding debt.

And Deutsche Bank has already sued Technical Olympic USA, alleging the Florida builder is in "multiple potential defaults" on $675 million in debt owed by several failed joint venture partnerships. Lennar says it's protected from any problems because it's hooked up with solid institutional investors like the pension fund CalPERS and has set up deals to ensure it isn't liable for partners.

http://emac.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2008/10/17/home-builders-hidden-time-bombs/

Resources to help you Survive a Layoff

You may click on the picture above to enlarge the information. All the information above is listed under the Georgia Department of Labor under "Surviving a layoff". The link is: http://www.dol.state.ga.us/js/survive_layoff.htm

And there are live links to each resource listed above on the webpage.