Existing Home Sales
May Existing Home Sales, a measure of closings where the contracts were likely signed a few months prior so thus doesn’t reflect the rise in mortgage rates, totaled 4.77mm annualized, 50k less than expected but is up from 4.66mm in April which was revised lower by 20k. The NAR said about 33% of the sales were foreclosures, well below the pace of 45-50% seen in months before. This was likely due to the moratorium’s put in place at the beginning of the year which have now ended. Months supply was the relative positive within the # as it fell to 9.6 from 10.1 in April as the absolute # of homes for sale fell to 3.798mm from 3.937mm in April. The median price fell 16.8% y/o/y but was up 3.8% sequentially and that likely reflects the slowdown in foreclosure sales which has been lowering the median price. Net-net, mortgage rates are up 40-50 bps since the contracts were likely signed and we need more data to see its impact.
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June 23rd, 2009 at 2:01 pm
IMHO. There’s so much crap folded into these numbers. There’s no real news. No one gave a confidence interval, or fit a curve with statistical significance. So I’d say it just more of the MSM same. Spinning green puke into green shoots.
Lots of luck predicting the future.
IMHO, the next major shifts will be massive GM and Chrysler layoffs/furloughs if allowed by the feds. Boeing canning people like mad. Or states and munis continuing their carnage. That’s perhaps the one place the stimulus plan has saved Democratic jobs. Yeah, the feds don’t want to run the companies, but they want socialist/communist employment levels. Boeing’ s little incompetence fiasco should whack the GDP pretty nicely too given the Paris Air Show results and the 787 delays.
June 23rd, 2009 at 2:02 pm
Quit eating comments.
June 23rd, 2009 at 10:14 pm
BTW. You can read all you want about this and that.
There are more foreclosures being held off the market here right now than 1 year ago. Enjoy the real estate bottom. NOT.