- by New Deal democrat
This morning both new home sales and two price indexes for houses were released for April, completing our view of that important long leading sector.
As anticipated, not only did new home sales decline for the month, but March was also hugely revised to the downside ( over 10%!):
With these revisions, the peak for new home sales becomes the December-January period, exactly as is the case for housing permits, starts, and existing home sales.
But if sales are down, prices are continuing to skyrocket:
As measured by the FHFA, prices increased 1.4% seasonally adjusted just in the past month! YoY they are up 13.9%. For the Case Shiller national index, the monthly change was +2.0%, and the YoY change was +13.2%.
Housing inventory is increasing again, up about 3% m/m and now only down about 2% YoY, vs. a trough of being down over 12% YoY.
I’ll have more later at Seeking Alpha.
