By Ann Saphir (Reuters) - This past summer, leads for Brian Brown's landscaping business near Lake Tahoe were drying up. “We’d put together bids, call clients, and they were like, 'well, we’re going to think about it,'" said Brown, whose typical customer owns luxury property in the California resort area. "Most of our clientele are not the kind of people that ‘think about it.
'" As the months ticked by, he got increasingly nervous about the spending pullback, which left him with a thin cash cushion going into the winter off-season and a smaller-than-usual book of business for next summer. He is cutting bonuses and considering laying off one of his six full-time staff. Then in September, the Federal Reserve eased policy and signaled borrowing costs were heading lower.
"That really allowed me to exhale a little bit," Brown said. He now expects that cheaper borrowing costs will let him refinance a clutch of loans that currently cost him $20,000 a month, and use the extra cash flow to build out a shop on one of his commercial yards. By springtime, he hopes, lower interest rates and the uncertainty of the U.
S. presidential election in the rearview mirror will also mean renewed demand for tree-trimming and other services, allowing him to make his usual 50 or so seasonal hires. Overall, he said, "we're cautiously optimistic.
" As the Fed shifts from the restrictive policy it imposed to quell inflation, Brown's change in sentiment is echoed by firms across the country. Surveys .
