Written by John Lounsbury and Steven Hansen
The headlines say new home sales improved. The median sales price for homes slightly improved – and inventory was stable.
Analyst Opinion of New Home SalesThis data series is suffering from methodology issues which manifest as significant backward revision – and this month the revisions were moderately downward. Home sales move in spurts and jumps – so this is why we view this series using a three month rolling average (rolling averages improved).Overall I view this as a good report, which was slightly below market expectations. Dispite the fact the data jumps around, the three month rolling averages are solidly improving.
Econintersect analysis:
- unadjusted sales growth accelerated 16.8 % month-over-month.
- unadjusted year-over-year sales up 31.4 %.. Year-over-year growth rate this month was well above the range of growth seen last 12 months.
- three month unadjusted trend rate of growth accelerated 5.6 % month-over-month – is up 24.4 % year-over-year.
Unadjusted Year-over-Year Rate of Growth – Sales (blue line) and 3 month rolling average of Sales (red line)
US Census Headlines:
- seasonally adjusted sales up 3.1 % month-over-month
- seasonally adjusted year-over-year sales up 29.8 % (last month was reported at 31.3 %)
- market expected (from Bloomberg) seasonally adjusted annualized sales of 570 K to 635 K (consensus 601 K) versus the actual at 593 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 September 2016 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 593,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is 3.1 percent (±16.2%)* above the revised August rate of 575,000 and is 29.8 percent (±23.4%) above the September 2015 estimate of 457,000.
