Category: Housing Market
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Why Not Better?
One economist can’t understand why housing sales aren’t doing better. Two others say things will change for the better any minute now. This week there was support for both views as home prices continued to slow and both pending home sales and interest rates fell again. David M. Blitzer, Managing Director and Chairman of the…
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Construction Steps Up
The National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) said its Housing Market Index has finally climbed out of the low 60’s range where it has hovered for months. The uptick in the index measures the confidence of builders in the new home market, hopefully indicating they are emboldened to start building again. And right on cue,…
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Cool Down
The hot California real estate market appears to be cooling down. Whether this is good news, bad news or merely yawn-inducing, probably depends whether you are in that market as a buyer, a seller, or not at all. Still, given the state’s role as a national trendsetter, it probably behooves everyone to pay attention. CoreLogic…
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Market Shifting
There has been a lot of evidence of late that the market might be shifting to a pattern more favorable to buyers than sellers. This week the picture got both clearer and a little pixelated. Data on September’s new, existing, and pending sales all came out and the first two continued what has become a…
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It’s All About Inventories
Sales of new homes in January were every bit as good as those released last week for existing homes. There were an estimated 41,000 newly built homes sold during the month compared to 38,000 in December. On a seasonally adjusted annual basis that works out to a pace of 555,000 units, up 3.7% from December…
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Fifty-Nine Months in a Row
Rising interest rates apparently aren’t scaring off buyers, so far at least. A spurt in existing home sales in January pushed the seasonally adjusted annual rate up 3.3% over December to 5.69 million units, a gain of 3.8% year-over-year. The rate of increase was the strongest for any month since the previous January and…
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Tough Sledding
Despite taking a dip in December, existing home sales still closed out 2016 as their best year since 2006. The National Association of Realtors (NAR) said that over the 12 months an estimated 5.45 million single-family houses, townhomes, condos, and cooperative apartments changed hands. This was 200,000 more units than sold in all of 2015…
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Behind The Headlines
The headline was hopeful, “New home sales rise 3.1% in September,” but you know what they say about devils and details. New home sales were indeed up, but only because the August sales turned out to be even worse than first reported. Instead of the annual rate of 609,000 first announced, they were revised to…
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Perhaps They’re Back
Existing home sales rebounded after a two-month slump but the National Association of Realtors was even more excited by a second stat–the share of first-time homebuyers rose 3 percentage points to 34%, the highest since July 2012. NAR Chief Economist Lawrence Yun said, “The market fundamentals–primarily consistent job gains and affordable mortgage rates–are there…
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Close Call
The public always gets two doses of information about the monthly meeting of the Federal Open Market Committee (FOMC). As the meeting ends there is a press release and a statement from Fed Chair Janet Yellen then a few weeks later the release of the “Beige Book” with the official minutes. The immediate news out…