The Real Estate Market Through The Lens Of United Technologies

Hartford-based United Technologies Corp. sells its heating, cooling and security systems in both the residential and commercial real estate markets, so it keeps close tabs on the recovery.

United Technologies Corp. Chief Financial Officer Gregory Hayes

At an investor conference in Chicago today, UTC’s Chief Financial Officer Greg Hayes had these observations according to a Bloomberg News transcript:

…the residential businesses, again we had a very slow start to the year. January, February…orders…were anemic and a very strong close to the quarter in March. That continued a bit in April but then again slowed back down and now through May orders in the [residential] businesses are up 5 percent…So the expectation is we’re not going to see a huge recovery in the U.S. residential marketplace, but we should see steady recovery on housing.

And just to think, to put it in perspective, from a housing start perspective, that we’re expecting about 700,000 housing starts this year…

So [residential] is coming back but it’s very, very slow.

On the commercial side, we’ve actually seen better traction there. We’ve seen kind of mid-to-higher single digit growth really not driven by new construction but by a retrofit and focus on energy efficiency.