Existing home sales as reported by the National Association of Realtors fell 7.1% in February 2016 from the month before. It was a very large decline but followed a two-month surge beginning December 2015; which itself came after an unusually large decline in November. In other words, housing and home sales seems to be that much more volatile of late. [...]
I haven’t reported much on the housing market this year because frankly it has been vastly surpassed by everything taking place (globally) with the “dollar” and the economy that seems stapled to it. However, November’s resale figures from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) have alarmed several lines of commentary normally more assured (friendly to the orthodox recovery). The rate [...]
Economic reports scorecard 7/20/15 - 7/31/15 The economic data releases since my last update were a bit better than expected but as the GDP report showed, the US economy continues to plod along at a disappointing pace. In fact, the GDP report was, in my opinion, not as good as the headline with investment a particularly disappointing aspect. I would [...]
The housing market has failed to perform as expected on either side. Instead, as far as a broader set of measures, real estate is in a bit of stasis, neither really growing nor falling apart. Given the set of mainstream economic expectations, that is confounding and could ultimately be a problem. If the economy is really growing, it should be [...]
For statistics like GDP, what is most important is relative comparison between the most recent quarters (or years). That narrow view misses a lot of important context, an aching factor when structural or longer-term defects in actual economic function drag on long past the points of tapered comparison. In that way, by only measuring the most recent relativity these statistics [...]
Existing home sales rebounded in December from a pretty ugly (and downwardly revised) November, but only slightly. That would seem to suggest that there are more lingering problems as the real estate market tries to find its way back to the path it was on before the word “taper” was injected into the MBS market. Despite the average mortgage rate [...]
The latest figures on housing construction have almost flipped the circumstances from late 2013. It was apartment construction that kept up hope that any retrenchment in single family construction would not be so devastating. Permit and start activity was, at the margins, almost totally dependent on multi-family construction to offset weakness in single homes. As of December 2014, the flattening [...]
The S&P/Case-Shiller 20-city home price index declined for the second month in a row in October, matching indications elsewhere that the slight rebound from the depths of last winter may be over. The Y/Y growth rate was the lowest since October 2012 as clearly price momentum has been lost. The upward movement in the index this year is by far [...]
Price momentum is usually the key factor in any asset bubble, as it takes sustained ascent to draw in more and more participants. If price acceleration begins to falter, the discussion and bemusement (for some) about who might end up the Greater Fool becomes paramount. But that is not a straight-line process either, nor is it with price momentum. In [...]
It should not have come as a surprise to convention that the PCE component of GDP was not going to be leading economic gains. The monthly PCE series has been “better” in later 2014 than the winter, but that is far too narrow a context in which to draw any conclusions. No matter how you measure, American consumers continue to [...]
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