RE and economic charts: New Home Sales weak in November

Friday, December 24, 2010

New Home Sales weak in November

[mEDITate-OR:
not see a very interesting re-interpretation of CR's wonderful charts
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Dirk van Dijk, CFA, in the 2nd article below takes a brand new take on CR.
Both of these are worth reading.
But, this is from Dirk:

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It's important to keep in mind how low sales were in October to put November's 5.5% increase in context.

If October's original sales rate hadn't been revised, November's increase would have been just 2.5%

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The seven lowest months on record (back to 1963) for new home sales have all been in the last seven months.

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Regionally, things were all over the map.

New home sales in the West soared by 37.3% on the month but are down 16.5%% year over year.

The South is the biggest and therefore most important of the Census regions when it comes to housing data it was up 5.8% on the month, but down 12.7% from a year ago.

Worst hit for both the month was the Northeast. There sales plunged 26.7% on the month and are off 29.0% from a year ago.

Sales in the Midwest were off 13.3% from September and are down 53.5% from a year ago, easily making it the hardest hit on a year-over-year basis.

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