New Home Sales awful but I say good, again

By Peter Boockvar - March 23rd, 2011, 10:32AM

Feb New Home sales, a measure of contract signings of new homes, totaled 250k, the lowest on record dating back to 1963 and 40k below expectations. Sales in all 4 regions fell. To put into perspective, US population size in 1963 was 190mm vs 310mm today. In Jan 1963, new home sales totaled 591k. With the sales drop and stable level of homes for sale (186k), the months supply rose to 8.9 from 7.4, the most since Aug. The median price fell 8.9% y/o/y and 13.9% sequentially. Builders continue to face large competition from still too many existing homes on the market, and while they continue to suffer thru a very difficult time, I repeat my comment from last week when Housing Starts were poor that the bright side of this low level of new home sales is that hopefully it allows the market to further purge itself of the inventory of existing homes as we don’t need more new homes right now.

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Category: MacroNotes.

Comments

Please use the comments to demonstrate your own ignorance, unfamiliarity with empirical data, ability to repeat discredited memes, and lack of respect for scientific knowledge. Also, be sure to create straw men and argue against things I have neither said nor even implied. Any irrelevancies you can mention will also be appreciated. Lastly, kindly forgo all civility in your discourse . . . you are, after all, anonymous.

One Response to “New Home Sales awful but I say good, again”

Data Room Says:
March 26th, 2011 at 10:30 am
Its amazing that with 310mm population the sales have decreased. I am afraid builder may reduce prices to get contracts and in turn may use cheap material which can be disastrous in the long run. This issue must be considered seriously i think.