No bottom yet in US housing

The US housing market is still not seeing a bottom. Bloomberg reports:

Confidence among U.S. homebuilders in November dropped to the lowest level since record-keeping began in 1985, a sign that the deepening credit crisis is preventing prospective buyers from purchasing new homes.

The National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo index of builder confidence decreased to 9, lower than forecast, from 14 in October, the Washington-based association said today. A reading less than 50 means most respondents view conditions as poor...

Home prices fell in four out of every five U.S. cities in the third quarter, a record spurred by distressed foreclosure sales across the country, the Chicago-based National Association of Realtors also said today. The median price of a U.S. home fell 9 percent from a year earlier and sales of properties with mortgages in default accounted for at least a third of all transactions.

Home prices are not the only ones falling. So are producer prices. Again from Bloomberg:

Prices paid to U.S. producers plunged in October by the most on record as the faltering global economy caused demand for commodities to dry up.

The larger-than-forecast 2.8 percent drop followed a 0.4 percent decline in September, the Labor Department said today in Washington. So-called core producer prices that exclude fuel and food rose 0.4 percent, indicating that the declines in raw- material costs have yet to feed through to other products.

Meanwhile, in the UK, consumer price inflation is slowing.

The U.K. inflation rate fell more than economists forecast in October, recording the steepest drop in at least 11 years, the Office for National Statistics said today in London. Consumer prices rose 4.5 percent from a year earlier, compared with 5.2 percent the previous month.