If you're looking for hints on the future of the real estate pipeline, including new residential and non-residential starts, you can do worse than listening to Ed Sullivan. The senior vice president and chief economist of the Portland Cement Association, Sullivan was among the keynote speakers at the recent mid-year meeting of the Herndon, Va.-based National Concrete Masonry Association, at the Inter-Continental Hotel in Chicago.

Invariably as riveting a speaker as he is an insightful forecaster, Sullivan began by noting the American economy is in something akin to a weather pattern calling for consistently warm and sunny days.