Relevant and even prescient commentary on news, politics and the economy.

Sales near 25 year lows, huge divergence between New and Existing Home Sales continues

With sales near 25 year lows, the huge divergence between the existing and new home markets continues  – by New Deal democrat The drastic bifurcation between the new and existing home markets continues. Existing home sales fell to 4.04 million annualized in August, the lowest level of the entire past 10+ years except for last […]

New home sales get walloped

New home sales get walloped New single family home sales got walloped in April, declining -16.6% for the month compared with March, and down -26.9% from one year ago. Measured from their most recent peak last December, they are off -29.6%, and measured from their pandemic peak of August 2020, they are down a whopping […]

New home sales for October continue slow upward trend

New home sales for October continue slow upward trend New home sales, while very noisy and heavily revised, tend to lead all of the other housing indicators, even permits. The heavy revisions figure, well, heavily, into this morning’s report. New home sales (blue in the graphs below) usually slightly lead to the much less volatile […]

Existing vs. new home sales: sales have peaked, expect prices to soon peak

Existing vs. new home sales: sales have peaked, expect prices to soon peak I normally don’t pay much attention to existing home sales. Even though they constitute about 90% of the housing market, they have much less impact on the economy overall than new home sales (because all of the economic activity involved in building […]