Comments on: Worst June New Home Sales Since 1982

By: New Mortgage Info » Blog Archive » Worst June New Home Sales Since 1982 | The Big Picture

Mon, 10 Aug 2009 10:50:32 +0000

[...] Barry Ritholtz wrote an interesting post today onWorst June New Home Sales Since 1982 | The Big PictureHere’s a quick excerpt [...]

By: Links for July 29th through July 31st | From The Desk Of Thomas Ott

Links for July 29th through July 31st | From The Desk Of Thomas Ott — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 22:09:04 +0000

[...] Worst June New Home Sales Since 1982 | The Big Picture – The best thing you can say is the 2nd derivative argument — Real Estate is now getting worse more slowly. Expect more price decreases, foreclosures and distressed sales. A healthy market cleared out of excess inventory with genuine price increases is likely years away . . . [...]

By: Housing Market Data « urbanexus

Housing Market Data « urbanexus — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 15:27:27 +0000

[...] as the Calculated Risk blog’s perspective[1]. Also see what Barry Ritholz has to say–Big Picture Blog review of charts on new home sales [...]

By: Broke Wall Streeter

Broke Wall Streeter — Thu, 30 Jul 2009 14:45:52 +0000

[...] is over, I thought I’d post some gloomier stories posted at Curbed. Here is a blog post from The Big Picture that has a variety of sad charts on real estate data. Some more bad news from The Real Deal. [...]

By: Media Continues Trend Of Reporting Data It Doesn’t Understand | Rights To Freedom

Thu, 30 Jul 2009 02:47:15 +0000

[...] commentator Barry Ritholtz publishes a blog called, “The Big Picture”. Barry does a nice job of showing exactly how the 11% increase number doesn’t really look all that spectacular when analyzed and [...]

By: DeDude

DeDude — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 22:08:35 +0000

danslepak;

If you want to know where we are (relative to where we came from), then you should look at year over year or peak/low vs current data. The fact that we fell off the clif in October is old news, and it does not tell us anything about where we are heading right now.

If you want to predict the future, it’s better to look at the trend in the last few months. The more noise the data has, the more months needs to go into that trend analysis. You also carefully have to consider the effects of any short-lived effectors that can influence the parameter in question (e.g.; the jump in median price in Nov and Dec 08 was likely due to the credit freeze blocking people with less money from bying a house).

More important than anything else is that you always stay open to pursuasion by the data, and never get into testosterone driven pi$$ing contests. No matter what your opinion was yesterday, look at the data as if you didn’t have one. Lots of people will ridicule you for changing your opinion as the available data change. Just remember that in the end those idiots are a lot more likely to be wrong than you. Personally I think Berry and DeBears here at TBP have closed their mind a little too much to the possibilities that housing has, or soon will, find a medium term low (or even the final low). I hope they are not putting their money where their mind is, because I like them and I think they are wrong ;-)

By: danslepak

danslepak — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:45:59 +0000

I’m just as bearish as everyone else on this blog currently, but in terms of new home sales, why are we not more optimistic? I understand that Y/Y numbers are horrible and that we haven’t seen these numbers since the early 80s, but aren’t we looking for positive motion instead of a still image? Isn’t it more important to know that we hit a bottom and are climbing rather than falling?

~~~

BR: Let me know when that happens . . .

By: rustum

rustum — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 16:36:22 +0000

Thanks for explaing it nicely.

By: pmorrisonfl

pmorrisonfl — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 15:07:34 +0000

@wunsacon I laughed out loud at the badger/Python reference. Classic, perfectly applied. Well played, sir.

I can confirm sailorman’s observations about South Florida. I will add this anecdote; in a friend’s neighborhood nearby, suburban Broward County, prices went from sub 200K to over 400K over the last 10 years. Three recent asking prices were 210K, 260K and 400K. Sales have been 175K-225K… and the punchline is that the ’400K’ house now has a ‘For Rent’ sign on it, probably the sign of an accidental landlord.

By: DeDude

DeDude — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 14:37:30 +0000

I seriously doubt that homebuilders started slashing prices in June in way they didn’t do in May. The fall in median price is likely more a reflection of two other things: 1) those who are still building are building small houses with less luxury features so they are less expensive, and 2) the stimulus package and investors have put a lot more demand into the low end of the market than the high end of the market. Both of those things will drive the median price lower, even if homebuilders are not slashing prices any more than they have been doing the last year.