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Behind The New Home Sales Data — A Darker Backdrop

New Home Sales Lag Income Growth- Click to enlarge

There’s so much great data in the Commerce Department’s monthly new home sales report. It’s always useful to parse it for all the tasty morsels that the mainstream media ignores. We’ll take a look at some of it here, with more to come in the days ahead.

First let’s look at the usual positive spin given the report in the mainstream media which is usually devoid of historical perspective whatsoever. It’s always about the short run. The Wall Street Journal’s headline said it all.

U.S. New-Home Sales Posted Solid Gain in First Half of 2016

Solid pace offers fresh evidence of healthy momentum in the U.S. housing market as home-buyers enjoy low interest rates

All of that is true, but it doesn’t tell the whole story. To his credit, the Journal’s Ben Leubsdorf noted in the body of the article that “the pace of home construction and purchases of new homes remain depressed compared with levels seen during past economic expansions” but he never addressed just how weak those sales are.

Here’s some perspective.

Sales have nearly doubled from the June 2010 and June 2011 lows of 28,000 to this June’s 54,000. But this is still down sharply from the June 2005 peak of 115,000 units. At the same time, it barely exceeds the low of 47,000 reached in June 1991 and 53,000 in June 1992 during that recession.

New Home Sales Long Term- Click to enlarge

Read the rest of this post at David Stockman’s Contra Corner, where first published.

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