Thursday, December 19, 2013

Existing Home Sales Are Now Negative Year-Over-Year For The First Time Since June 2011

This has been a weak dominated by housing related data for the United States. We have seen a the NAHB HMI rise and housing costs boosting CPI and housing starts break a million but mortgage applications breaking down.

Today we have existing home sales falling to an 11-month low in November. While not a surprise given the fall in pending home sales, it is eye-catching that existing home sales have fallen for the past four months. Regionally, the West was the weakest falling to it's lowest sales level since July 2011. The good news is that existing home supply has seem to found footing around 5 months supply for most of 2013 (a level similar to pre-housing boom) and house prices remain higher than they were a year ago.  Lots of charts below.

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