Paper Economy - A US Real Estate Bubble Blog: New Home Sales: April 2010

Wednesday, May 26, 2010

New Home Sales: April 2010

Today, the U.S. Census Department released its monthly New Residential Home Sales Report for April showing significant revisions to prior months as well as a notable jump in sales on a month-to-month and year-over-year basis fueled mostly from a surge of housing tax-credit buying.

Nevertheless, the low for the series currently remains February 2010 making the huge jump in sales look even more than suspiciously "stimulated".

New single family home sales jumped 14.8% since March and 47.8% since April 2009 while the monthly supply declined to 5.0 months while the median months for sale declined to 14.3 months.

The following charts show the extent of sales decline (click for full-larger version)

Labels: economy, new home sales

3 Comments:

This AP story looks like it was written by one of your readers:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100525/ap_on_bi_ge/us_home_prices

You sometimes mention that the housing bust in the 80s-90s hit a false bottom in the middle, but then went on later to bust further. Do you have any theories as to what caused that false bottom? Did the Fed pump things up? Did govt deficit spending increase? Was banking regulation relaxed? Was it a side effect of another boom?

I'm just looking for parallels.

By Dagger, at 1:20 PM
Dagger,

Well one thing to consider is that there were various foreclosure mitigation policies that I believe must have interfered with the natural clearing of the market.

In the Boston area (a market that firmly felt the severity of 90s bust), prices hit their ultimate bottom with simultaneously with the highest level of foreclosures and highest rate of unemployment.

It appeared that after the main down draft in prices there was a long slog as foreclosures cleared the market and the employment situation stabilized.

By SoldAtTheTop, at 2:22 PM
hai it is good see the new of NEW HOME SALES and we are very happy and prices hit their ultimate bottom with simultaneously with the highest level of fore closures and highest rate of people I agree with Dagger and it is nice to clearing market.

By jamesausmartin, at 12:04 AM