Written by John Lounsbury and Steven Hansen
The headlines say new home sales significantly improved from last month (even though last month was revised downward) – but the improvement was less than last month’s decline. The rolling averages smooth out much of the uneven data produced in this series – and this month there was a deceleration in the rolling averages.
As the data is noisy, the 3 month rolling average is the way to look at this data. This data series is suffering from methodology issues. Econintersect analysis:
- unadjusted sales growth accelerated 16.0 % month-over-month (after last month’s revised deceleration of 24.7 %).
- unadjusted year-over-year sales up 7.9 % (Last month was down 2.7 %). Growth this month average for the range of growth seen last 12 months.
- three month unadjusted trend rate of growth decelerated 4.8 % month-over-month – is up 5.4 % year-over-year.
Unadjusted Year-over-Year Rate of Growth – Sales (blue line) and 3 1month rolling average of Sales (red line)
US Census Headlines:
- seasonally adjusted sales up 10.7 % month-over-month
- seasonally adjusted year-over-year sales up 4.9 %
- market expected (from Bloomberg) seasonally adjusted annualized sales of 458 K to 540 K (consensus 499 K) versus the actual at 495 K.
The quantity of new single family homes for sale remains well below historical levels.
Seasonally Adjusted New Homes for Sale
As the sales data is noisy (large monthly variations).
Year-over-Year Change – Unadjusted New Home Sales Volumes (blue line) with zero growth line emphasized
The headlines of the data release:
Sales of new single-family houses in October 2015 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 495,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is 10.7 percent (±17.7%)* above the revised September rate of 447,000 and is 4.9 percent (±17.6%)* above the October 2014 estimate of 472,000.
