This morning’s release of the March Existing Homes Sales beat expectations, rising to an annual rate of 5.19 million units. The Investing.com consensus was for 5.03 million. The latest number represents a 6.1% increase from the previous month. This is the highest reading since September 2013 and the largest percent increase since December 2010.
For a longer-term perspective, here is a snapshot of the data series, which comes from the National Association of Realtors. The data since January 1999 is available in the St. Louis Fed’s FRED repository here.
Over this time frame we clearly see the Real Estate Bubble, which peaked in 2005 and then fell dramatically. Sales were volatile for the first year or so following the Great Recession. The latest estimate puts us back to the general level around the turn of the century.
The Population-Adjusted Reality
Now let’s examine the data with a simple population adjustment. The Census Bureau’s mid-month population estimates show a 15.4% increase in the US population since the turn of the century. The snapshot below is an overlay of the NAR’s annualized estimates with a population-adjusted version.
Existing home sales are 0.8% below the NAR’s January 2000 estimate. The population-adjusted version is 13% below the turn-of-the-century sales.
