US New Home Sales Collapsed 18% In February
New home sales printed a sizable miss to consensus for February, adding to evidence that America's red-hot housing market may be cooling off.
The 775,000 annual rate last month represented a nine-month low. The 18.2% drop (figure below) was the worst decline in nearly eight years. The market was looking for 870,000 on the headline.
The range of estimates was 750,000 to 970,000 from nearly five-dozen economists, so this very nearly matched the most pessimistic guess. The previous three months w
“Demand isn’t disappearing from the marketplace… it really is a lack of supply,” quoth the King of the Realtor-Economists as the months-of-supply graph ticked upward on the screen behind him.
I suppose both things are possible, of course, if urban dwellers are creating a glut of condo and apt listings as they go searching for the perfect suburban McMansion. NAR doesn’t break down months-of-supply by segment, so I may never know.