Home sales up 7.4%

per reuters...

The National Association of Realtors said on Tuesday that existing home sales rose 7.4 percent to an annual rate of 6.54 million units in November. It was the fastest pace since February 2007 and above analysts' 6.25 million-unit forecast.

I'm never really sure what this is an indicator of, if anything. I guess it's a buyer's and seller's market at the same time, which of course can't be sustained.

I would imagine the uptick is due to the low interest rates, buyer credits and the like. Just can't imagine that this will remain going into the 1st quarter of 2010.

BTW, wonder if there's any indicator showing the number of bankrupt builders and home contractors?

LTRT wrote:I would imagine the uptick is due to the low interest rates, buyer credits and the like. Just can't imagine that this will remain going into the 1st quarter of 2010.

BTW, wonder if there's any indicator showing the number of bankrupt builders and home contractors?

The lower interest rates and the buyer credits being devices to stimulate the housing market, then well, yea. The better new in my opinion is the growth in GDP, that I thought was projected to be over 4% next quarter. Mmy internal hack economist means that productivity is up, and such cant be sustained without adding jobs.

Unemployment is still slowing down, I would imagine within 12 months we will add jobs.

Pez wrote:

LTRT wrote:I would imagine the uptick is due to the low interest rates, buyer credits and the like. Just can't imagine that this will remain going into the 1st quarter of 2010.

BTW, wonder if there's any indicator showing the number of bankrupt builders and home contractors?

The lower interest rates and the buyer credits being devices to stimulate the housing market, then well, yea. The better new in my opinion is the growth in GDP, that I thought was projected to be over 4% next quarter. Mmy internal hack economist means that productivity is up, and such cant be sustained without adding jobs.

Unemployment is still slowing down, I would imagine within 12 months we will add jobs.

Might want to rethink that GDP estimate. They just revised the 3rd quarter down from 3.5% to 2.2%. Which if you remember 1.7% was due to the cash for clunker program. You won't be seeing 4% for a while.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/us-gdp-revised-down-to-22-annual-rate-2009-12-22?reflink=MW_news_stmp

odd... goes to show you how confusing this is for my internal hack economist the same source:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/jp-morgan-credit-suisse-hike-us-gdp-forecasts-2009-12-11

I just realized I was two posts from 1000...

so I was taking them for free...

Pez wrote:so I was taking them for free...

Merry Christmas from one post-padder to another, oops wrong thread.

LTRT wrote:

Pez wrote:so I was taking them for free...

Merry Christmas from one post-padder to another, oops wrong thread.

Wow, I didn't realize you're a Jedi Master already!

New home sales sink to record low
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36014580/ns/business-real_estate/

WASHINGTON - Sales of newly built U.S. single-family homes fell for a fourth straight month to a record low in February, a government report showed on Wednesday, heightening fears of renewed weakness in the housing market.

"renewed weakness"...uh, when did the housing market ever rebound? Probably that fuzzy math thing again.

LTRT wrote:New home sales sink to record low
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/36014580/ns/business-real_estate/

WASHINGTON - Sales of newly built U.S. single-family homes fell for a fourth straight month to a record low in February, a government report showed on Wednesday, heightening fears of renewed weakness in the housing market.

"renewed weakness"...uh, when did the housing market ever rebound? Probably that fuzzy math thing again.

Obviously the 8K and 6.5K incentives have stopped working.

Once unemployment starts going down the housing market will logically trend upward... LTRT, I dont think it's fuzzy math or any other GOP buzzwords. There were several stories in the past month where analysts speculated that the housing market had bottomed, however the one story I heard stated that as a very guarded assessment.

Pez wrote:Once unemployment starts going down...

Almost lost the coffee on that one.

LTRT wrote:

Pez wrote:Once unemployment starts going down...

Almost lost the coffee on that one.

Ah yea, Obama will stop at nothing until he and 59 senators are the only ones in the country with a job :-)

Well the tax break is over and we see the real housing market numbers. 33% decline is pretty significant considering May starts the home buying season in the Northern states. I was expecting a drop but not this severe.

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-06-23/sales-of-u-s-new-houses-plunge-to-lowest-level-on-record.html

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100622/ap_on_bi_ge/us_home_sales