Disastrous New Home Sales

We highlighted historical charts of Existing Home Sales on Tuesday, and following yesterday's report, we highlight them for New Home Sales. Economists were looking for New Home Sales to come in at 580,000. The actual number came in at 526,000, which was a huge miss.

In the first chart below, we provide historical monthly New Home Sales going back to 1964. As shown, the declines have been sharp and severe following the parabolic rise that ended in 2005. Monthly sales are now well below the historical average of 697,000.

We also provide a chart of the historical month-over-month and year-over-year changes for New Home Sales. As shown, the year-over-year declines have now gotten close to prior lows in '66, '80, '81 and '91. New Home Sales were still coming in at 700k to 800k as recently as last fall, so even if sales stay at the same levels for the next couple of months, the year-over-year declines will still be more than -30% for awhile.

Comments

[Tim Plaehn]

Looking at how far new home sales got away from the usual range in 2004-2007 really shows how useless YoY figures are until sales spend some time back in normal ranges.