For generations, single family housing development was a driver of US economic growth. Today, there is no single family housing industry to speak of. These 7 charts derived from this week’s release of new house sales data from the Census Bureau illustrates just how bad things are. New house sales fell versus September 2015 and remain…
The Fed has created permanent housing crisis from which there is no escape. Total US housing starts peaked in 1972. This chart shows actual (not seasonally manipulated) total starts, multifamily starts, and single family starts for each September since then. Click here to view chart if reading in email. I have 3 observations. The recovery in…
Yesterday’s new home sales report from the Census Bureau triggered an ebullient response. Big media used words like “surge; soar; rise sharply; above expectations” to describe it. The Wall Street Journal said, “Sales of new, single-family homes rose by 5.7% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 552,000.” The headline number they reported reflected the monthly seasonal adjustment and…
NAR data on housing sales showed the largest August decline since 1999, the earliest publicly available data.
NAR data on housing sales showed the largest July decline since 2011, cutting the annual sales volume growth rate by 47% since March. However, while the growth rate is slowing, total sales volume was the heaviest for July since the peak of the housing bubble in 2005. Heavy but declining volume is a warning sign that…
The NAR reported that the median US existing home sale price for sales that settled in July was $234,000, which puts the annual inflation rate for house prices at 5.6%. That’s softer than the June closed sale price inflation rate of 6.5% but still way above what the BLS is recognizing for the housing inflation component…
The Wall Street Journal reported today that: U.S. Home-Builder Confidence Hits Near-Decade High “An index of builder confidence in the market for new single-family homes rose one point to a seasonally adjusted level of 61 in August, the National Association of Home Builders said Monday. A reading over 50 means most builders generally see conditions…
The mainstream media reported the Case Shiller Index for “May.” I put that in quotes because the data does not represent the actual state of the market in May. Case Shiller represents the 3 month average price of repeat sales (not all sales, just houses that had sold previously) which were recorded by county agencies…
The seasonally adjusted (SA) headline number for the monthly-error-times-12-annualized version of new home sales in June was 482,000. Wall Street analysts had guessed that the number would be 550,000. The Wall Street Journal went into apoplectic excuse-making mode, almost foaming at the mouth to try to find pundits to explain away the bad number. The…
The media dutifully reported the NAR’s version of seasonally adjusted, built-in monthly error times 12, annualized, officially recorded, home sales closings in June today. The housing industry cartel and lobbying behemoth said that houses are selling at an annual rate of 5,340,000 on that basis. Bloomberg enthused that, “Sales of previously owned U.S. homes climbed to an eight-year high in June…
