What would you think if I told you the price of an existing house and a new house in this country were negatively correlated? (Case/Shiller HPI only measures resale). That sounds impossible and I would argue to my grave that it is certainly impossible over the long term. But... What happens when your house appreciates significantly in a short [...]
Xi Jinping’s earlier “stimulus” promises had originally stimulated the Keynesian-addled imaginations of Western observers and Economists. Hearing only that single word, they didn’t appear much interested in any of its details. Like how Emperors facing increasingly grave difficulties historically tend to stimulate their own capacity for remaining Emperor above everything else.For a very brief moment, as Shanghai reopened, there were [...]
Economists will not remove themselves from seeing the economy as it “should be” rather than take it for what it is (and what that actually means). They have latched their narrative to the idea that it is you who has the perception problem no matter how isolated the “recovery” becomes. There never was much indication for a decent recovery all [...]
The housing market has failed to perform as expected on either side. Instead, as far as a broader set of measures, real estate is in a bit of stasis, neither really growing nor falling apart. Given the set of mainstream economic expectations, that is confounding and could ultimately be a problem. If the economy is really growing, it should be [...]
The level of new home sales seemed to take another run at the 500k seasonally-adjusted annual rate in December. This would be the third time in 2014 that the pace of sales reached a new high point for this cycle, but the prior two were subsequently revised much lower. In fact, revisions have made it very difficult to find much [...]
The S&P/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index declined for the second month in a row in October, matching indications elsewhere that the slight rebound from the depths of last winter may be over. The Y/Y growth rate was the lowest since October 2012 as clearly price momentum has been lost. The upward movement in the index this year is by far [...]
There was a surge in new home sales reported last week, breaking the current flat trend that extended back well beyond last year’s MBS problems. The huge increase in sales, so out of character with other indications recently, suggests possible noisiness in the data. That is particularly true when existing home sales fell in August according to the NAR, and [...]
New home sales rose on a year-over-year basis, but the adjusted figures suggest that says more about softness in July 2013 than strength in July 2014. Whatever the case may actually be, the seasonally-adjusted rate of home sales has been quite disappointing after the “surge” post-winter. In fact, that bounce has been all but revised away, leaving what looks like [...]
Existing home sales rose again in July from a downward revised June, as the monthly change of 2.4% matched June’s revised increase over May. The yearly comparisons still continue to lag, as does the overall trend after the massive interruption that began last autumn. As the pace of sales has come back somewhat in 2014, the number of properties for [...]
The depressed level of existing home sales throughout 2014 so far continued into April despite all projections of pent up demand after a cold and wintry start. There was some growth in the month-to-month change of the seasonally adjusted figures, but even there the clear problem that has been evident since mortgage finance collapsed starkly remains. While it may be [...]
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