Today, the U.S. Census Department released its monthly New Residential Home Sales Report for November showing both significant revisions to prior months' results as well as a whopping 11.3% month-to-month decline in sales of newly constructed single family dwellings bringing the seasonally adjusted annual sales pace down to 355,000 units or 9.0% below the level seen in November 2008 and remaining 74.44% below the peak level 2005.

We are now only 1.87% above the record low hit earlier this year and likely on course for a breach of that level come early 2010.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) publishes the results of a weekly applications survey that covers roughly 50 percent of all residential mortgage originations and tracks the average interest rate for 30 year and 15 year fixed rate mortgages, 1 year ARMs as well as application volume for both purchase and refinance applications.

The purchase application index has been highlighted as a particularly important data series as it very broadly captures the demand side of residential real estate for both new and existing home purchases.

Today, the National Association of Realtors (NAR) released its Existing Home Sales Report for November showing a continuation of the epic government sponsored surge in home sales activity, particularly for condos and lower end properties.

In fact, the stimulative effects have been so pronounced that sales of single family homes were up over 42% annually while sales of condos jumped a whopping 60% over the same period.

Today, the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) released its third and final installment of the Q3 2009 GDP report showing that the economy expanded with GDP increasing at an annual rate of 2.2% from Q2, a significantly slower rate than the 3.5% originally reported in October's fictitious preliminary release.

It's important to recognize the extent to which these numbers had been ginned-up within the context of the typical release process and consider the fact that the future benchmark revisions will more than likely revise the result even lower.

Against the backdrop of historically low interest rates and government stimulation, "resilient" participants in property markets in both the United States and the United Kingdom responded with nothing short of jubilance.

Whereas pessimism was the leading dynamic for the majority of 2008, it seems that the Spring of 2009 brought a renewal of housing euphoria, albeit in a more limited and fragile sense.

Those who have been following along since the early days of the housing debacle will recall the role played by housing bubble blogesphere arch-nemesis and former National Association of Realtors chief economist David Lereah.

Until May of 2007 Lereah vigorously worked to spin the story of housing in such a way as to produce the best and most optimistic outlook possible.

As I had noted in my original post, historically it has been very unusual for there to be more than a 1.5% difference (either more or less) between the unemployment rates in Massachusetts and Rhode Island.

Recently though, we have seen a historically unusual spread between Rhode Island’s high rate and Massachusetts’ far lower rate.

Today’s release of the Chicago Federal Reserve National Activity Index (CFNAI) indicated that national economic activity contracted again in November with three of four component indices declining and with the personal consumption and housing component showing the weakest results.

The CFNAI is a weighted average of 85 indicators of national economic activity collected into four overall categories of “production and income”, “employment, unemployment and income”, “personal consumption and housing” and “sales, orders and inventories.”

Today, the Department of Labor released its latest read of Joblessness showing seasonally adjusted “initial” unemployment claims increased by 7,000 to 480,000 claims from last week’s revised 473,000 claims while “continued” claims increased 5,000 resulting in an “insured” unemployment rate of 3.9%.

Today’s results, though still significantly elevated, continues to indicate that the descent to both initial and continued claims is continuing in earnest resulting in an almost textbook peak.

Today’s New Residential Construction Report continued to indicate a weak recovery for the new home market showing the first year-over-year increases to both permits and starts seen in at least 44 months (44 starts, 45 permits).

It’s clear now that the government’s housing stimulus tax credit and loose FHA lending policies have worked to prop both new and existing home sales.

The Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) publishes the results of a weekly applications survey that covers roughly 50 percent of all residential mortgage originations and tracks the average interest rate for 30 year and 15 year fixed rate mortgages, 1 year ARMs as well as application volume for both purchase and refinance applications.

The purchase application index has been highlighted as a particularly important data series as it very broadly captures the demand side of residential real estate for both new and existing home purchases.

Yesterday, the National Association of Homebuilders (NAHB) released its latest Housing Market Index (HMI) showing generally flat results.

It's important to recognize that although each sentiment index has now shown notable year-over-year increases, their levels still remain near the worst levels seen in over 20 years.

In a prior post I detailed nine regional housing markets for which the Radar Logic home price data has indicated that the spring and early summer price bounce has now given way and reverted back to and even below the lows of March.

Today, consider eleven additional markets where home prices have now clearly peaked and will soon likely join the prior nine.

Today, the Federal Reserve released its monthly read of industrial production showing a tepid continuation of the production bounce that occurred primarily as a result of the “cash-for-clunkers” and "cash-for-home debtors" policies.

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“Final product” consumer durable goods increased 1.51% on a month-to-month basis while remaining 3.17% below the level seen just one year ago.

This post combines the latest results of the Rueters/University of Michigan Survey of Consumers, the Conference Board’s Index of CEO Confidence and the State Street Global Markets Index of Investor Confidence indicators.

These three indicators should disclose a clear picture of the overall sense of confidence (or lack thereof) on the part of consumers, businesses and investors as the current recessionary period develops.

The most recent results of the Moody’s/REAL Commercial Property Index continue to suggest that the nation’s commercial real estate markets are now firmly experiencing a tremendous downturn, with prices plummeting a whopping 36.98% on a year-over-year basis and a stunning 42.70% since the peak set in October 2007.

The Moody’s/REAL CPPI data series is produced by the MIT/CRE but is noted to be “complimentary” to their alternative transaction based index (TBI) as it is published monthly and is formulated from a completely different dataset supplied by Real Capital Analytics, Inc. (Click to enlarge)