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 [...]
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 [...]
When home sales rose M/M (slightly) in April for the first time in 2014, the NAR theorized it as the turnaround signal. Their reasoning for it was strange in the context of basic, intuitive economics (meaning non-textbook). Rising prices on too few available homes for sale was supposed to signal more construction, as this shortage narrative was perhaps the only [...]
There is, of course, an intermediate step between mortgage finance and home construction – new home sales. So it stands to reason that given the collapse in mortgage finance (demand) and the correlated slide in construction that home sales would be of a similar pattern. The latest figures from the Census Bureau thus contain no surprising information, unless one was [...]
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