The Guardian newspaper, UK and US Edition, as well as our hometown newspaper, to fill it

of the inquiry, to look at where we are now in the first quarter of 2024.

No recession.

In fact, we've had information as to why no recession because we love to shop. That's the simple version. But Gene Marks is here to explain in more detail. Gene, a very good evening to you, there's good and

bad and plenty of both spent in this lifetime on this anxious planet. Right now

I want to emphasize the positive. We begin however with your one of your favorite

metrics, the architecture billing for the next year. What does it look like? Is it

promising? Good evening to you.

Hi John, yeah, you know, we'll talk about the economy and there really are a lot of strong

parts in the economy.

You know, again, we're in a big country and like any economy that's the size of ours they're always going to be

that sectors of the economy that are not doing as well and real estate is not

doing as well. I think we have realized that vacancies are up commercial properties right now are struggling and the American Institute of Architects my one of my favorite metrics that I like to look at in the in the real estate industry continues to show softening.

This is a metric that the AIA, you know, they pull all of their member firms and they

asked, you know, what are your billings like you know what are you what are you

designing what are you you know what are you getting paid to do and remember these

architecture the ones that are working on stuff that we're going to see coming

in the market you know in future months both commercial and residential, not only were the buildings themselves

not very strong, but the architectural buildings from multifamily homes, you know, you know, you know, like you know, twins and apartment buildings

and things like that. They've declined for the past 17 months. So you know, on the

construction side and the building side of the real estate industry not great the housing side existing home sales are at a 30 year low

A lot of it has to do with mortgage rates being where they are right now

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