Today, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) released their Existing Home Sales Report for July showing a truly epic collapse in demand coming in the wake of the now obviously phony baloney government tax credit sponsored surge in home sales activity seen since early 2009.Single family home sales collapsed 27.1% since June falling a whopping 25.6% below the level seen last year, the LARGEST annual decline on record since the massive housing slump began in 2005-2006, while prices stayed flat since last month but remain .9% above the level seen last year.
It's important to note that inventory is continuing to mount with the latest level rising 1.5% above the level seen in July 2009 and, combined with the massive slump in sales, resulting in a huge monthly supply surge to 11.9.
Clearly, all can now see that the government's housing tax credit was not only a gimmick... it was a complete failure, a massively wasteful and expensive handout to the housing industry and a futile and likely very dangerous exercise in market manipulation.
More importantly, today's results demonstrate that the Keynesian trickery of targeted "stimulus" is simply failed policy and has revealed those who have preach its benefits as charlatans and fools.
The following charts (click for full-screen dynamic version) shows national existing single family home sales, median home prices, inventory and months of supply since 2005.
