New home sales edge upward in April despite coronavirus stay-at-home orders

[Bullitt]

Subject to revisions, like all reports, but these numbers are good considering not only the forced shutdown the also the bad northeast weather in April.

Sales of newly-built single-family houses occurred at a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 623,000, the government reported Tuesday.

That was 0.6% above the revised pace of 619,000 in March. Compared with the previous year, however, new home sales were down 6.2% in April.

Analysts polled by MarketWatch had forecast new-home sales to occur at a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 480,000 in April. Because of the small sample size used to produce to new-home sales report, it is prone to significant revisions.

What happened: The Northeast experienced the largest increase between March and April in new home sales, with an 8.7% uptick. New home sales rose 2.4% in both the Midwest and South, but fell 6.3% in the West.

https://www.marketwatch.com/story/n...te-coronavirus-stay-at-home-orders-2020-05-26

 

[Bullitt]

That trend upward has continued into June. Still down year over year, but see bold.

I know of a few friends and acquaintances who had no problem at all selling their home during the shutdown, but I wonder how much of this buying is by professionals buying up places to rent now and sell for inflated prices later. Believe it or not, people will travel again (air bnb, etc.) and millenials will need to seek shelter as they encroach on their mid 30's.

Sales of previously owned houses in the US jumped 20.7 percent from the previous month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.72 million units in June 2020 from a near decade low of 3.91 million in May, but below market expectations of 4.78 million. That was the largest increase in existing home sales since the series began in 1968 as mortgage rates remained at record low levels and as the economy reopened from coronavirus-induced restrictions.

The median existing house price increased 3.5 percent from a year ago to a record USD 295,300 in June.

https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/existing-home-sales

 

[Bullitt]

Well, bigger is always better right? I wonder how much of this is from people buying second homes in warmer states, or "places near the lake". You want to be rich, the best way is housing, however, it is not headache prone.

“The housing market is well past the recovery phase and is now booming with higher home sales compared to the pre-pandemic days,” said Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist.

“With the sizable shift in remote work, current homeowners are looking for larger homes and this will lead to a secondary level of demand even into 2021.”

“The number of new listings is increasing, but they are quickly taken out of the market from heavy buyer competition,” he said. “More homes need to be built.”

Seasonally adjusted price chart.



https://www.zerohedge.com/economics/us-existing-homes-sales-soar-record-july-highest-14-years