Housing Holds

While many fret that existing housing sales have recently been slumping, the angst is misplaced. Since early last year sales have declined 7%, but distressed sales as a percentage of all sales have fallen from 25% of sales to just 15%, a drop of 10 percentage points, more than the 7% drop in sales. Thus,…

Read More

Week of June 24th

Despite a huge downward revision of Q1 GDP growth from 2.4% to 1.8%, data for Q2 look decent. Durable goods orders look OK, home sales are good and despite sequestration and the payroll tax increase, consumer spending is holding up surprisingly well and savings rates actually edged up to 3.2% in May from 2.8% in…

Read More

GOOD NEWS

New home sales spiked 17.5% MoM in Dec, eclipsing the 3.5% median expectation. But, there’s always a but, the gain was led by a 70% jump in new home sales in the West. Every other region was flat. So all it took was a pop from 4,000 sales to (hold your breath) 7,000 sales in…

Read More