The National Association of Realtors (NAR) reported today that pending home sales declined for the third straight month. As with so many other accounts, it’s not really the downside that is relevant but how instead there has been little to no growth for quite some time now. The NAR’s index value, which is how the organization reports the level of [...]
There is one part missing from the narrative sketched out in home resales being subjected to monetary imbalance. It is a compelling explanation for what we find as the most striking aspect of existing home sales, namely the curious lack of depth among sellers. It’s as if despite rising prices there is a seller strike where a significant part of [...]
Another “unexpected” decline in home data has raised even bigger questions about the idea that the real estate market is settling into some steady and slow growth period. That has been the revised hope after the MBS disaster in late 2013. The middle of 2014 saw a renewed not-quite-enthusiasm for real estate which led to the belief that housing might [...]
I don't believe it. ... You can't predict a weak number, but August tends to be weak consistently, and it tends to get revised up consistently. I think the trend is still north of 200,000. Every other data point is pointing to stronger growth, not weaker growth. Mark Zandi, Chief Economist at Moody's after last week's employment report That, my [...]
New home sales rose on a year-over-year basis, but the adjusted figures suggest that says more about softness in July 2013 than strength in July 2014. Whatever the case may actually be, the seasonally-adjusted rate of home sales has been quite disappointing after the “surge” post-winter. In fact, that bounce has been all but revised away, leaving what looks like [...]
To add more concreteness and weight to today’s observations about home construction (and renovation), comparable store sales at both Home Depot and Lowes confirm the slowing of real estate construction. It is nice, if not so often, when hard dollar figures imitate to even a small degree what is being shown of adjusted statistical probabilities. Lowes has not yet reported [...]
It seems as if there is a little more complexity taking place in mortgage finance, and therefore the housing “market”, as the simplified idea of rates running the show isn’t holding water. On the surface, the general theme is one that contours to the outline of conventional mortgage interest as it ran through last year’s selloff. It stands to reason [...]
In contrast to existing home sales there has been no real bounce in new home sales. Again, that more than contradicts the idea of a home shortage (or at least a true market shortage, there may be a shortage when only factoring monetary targets) and further explains why builders are reluctant to close the purported supply gap. It makes no [...]
Now that home sales have bounced off the winter lows, we can analyze the real estate market outside of the excuses and distractions. There is no question that May’s sales rate was far better than January or February, but once again that is an amazingly low standard of comparison. In fact, May 2014’s SAAR is pretty much the same as [...]
In advance of another rash of housing statistics, one of the main components driving more optimistic expectations is household formation. After being severely depressed by the Great Recession and then the lack of real recovery, at some point population dynamics should begin to drive actual demand for owning shelter. Of course, it seems like a good part of the construction [...]
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