Housing Up, But Consumer Habits Changing During COVID-19 Pandemic

Enter your number to get our free mobile app

Friday on The Chad Hasty Show James Arnold, President and CEO of ABC Bank in Lubbock, joined the broadcast to talk about the positives and negatives of the Lubbock area's economy in the age of the coronavirus crisis.

Arnold, while describing the single positive among the many negatives in the local economy, said:

We're feeling it locally obviously. Unemployment's up around the area, no surprise to anybody. Retail sales are down, the numbers are all pretty negative around the market, around the area, with the exception of housing. Housing is experiencing a boom. They had over seven hundred new housing starts through May, and we've never that in the history of tracking this, had this many housing starts this early...I think a lot of this is the resilience of the Lubbock economy...I think people are confident in their jobs enough to go ahead and start that new house, buy that new house.

Also discussed was the continued lethargic pace of retail sales and business, and what his forecast is in those arenas. Arnold said during his reply:

Everybody's habits are changing Chad. Everybody's getting comfortable learning how to do more online banking, and learning how to shop online with Amazon or whoever. And so people aren't going to retail stores, so that's disheartening. Airlines, the flights were down out of Lubbock ninety five percent back in May. They've rebounded and more people are getting on planes in Lubbock, but it's down sixty eight percent, year to date. No one's going to movie theaters anymore, so now they're doing Netflix or Hulu. So the consumers were forced into this, but they're adapting right? So we've done this long enough where all kinds of habits are kind of changing. So I don't know what it looks like on the other side of this thing to be honest with you.

Listen to the entire interview with James Arnold in the video above.

The Chad Hasty Show airs weekday mornings live, from 8:30 AM to 11:00 AM on News/Talk 95.1 FM and 790 AM KFYO. You may also listen to the show live online at KFYO.com, on the fantastic, free and easy to use KFYO App, all Alexa-enabled devices using the KFYO Skill, as well as on Google Home devices. You may follow Chad on Twitter: @ChadHastyRadio, Instagram: instagram.com/chadhastyradio, Snapchat: @ChadHastyRadio. Much more information about Hasty, as well as his extra-show content and commentary may be found at kfyo.com/author/chadhasty. Be sure to tune in daily to KFYO and check our website for the latest news and commentary, follow KFYO Radio on Twitter: @KFYO, and subscribe to KFYO's YouTube channel.