New home sales rise m/m, but signal caution for housing market going forward

New home sales increased to a three month annualized high of 923,000 in January. This is of a piece with the positive news last week on housing permits. At the same time, the pace remains below the recent high of 979,000 annualized set six months ago in July. The below graph compares housing starts (blue) with the much less volatile single family permits (red) and the even more volatile, and heavily revised, new home sales (gold), normalized to 100 as of January 2020: