New home sales in the US rose at just half the expected pace in January, and that off a downwardly-revised base in December.

The 1.54% month-to-month increase was the second consecutive, but it was underwhelming. Economists collectively saw a 3% increase. And, again, revisions lopped 27,000 off the prior three months, pointing to a slower pace of sales during Q4 of 2023. January’s annual rate was 661,000 against a 684,000 consensus. The range of estimates from 55 people who get paid to make guesses was 618,000 to 715,000.

As a quick aside, do note that any one of those people could submit a guess not based on any sort of forecast, but rather simply based on the other guesses. So, if forecasting these numbers is my job and I’m feeling lazy this month, why not just pick a number based on the forecasts of my fellow economists? Who’s going to call me out on it where that means ask to see my math? Nobody, folks. Nobody.

As the uninteresting figure above shows, the pace of new home sales is meandering. Those of you following along will recall that builder sentiment rose a third month in February to 48 on the NAHB’s gauge. That counted as a six-month high.

You know the story. And it hasn’t changed, curse it. New construction is still the only game in town. Notwithstanding a meaningful uptick in existing home sales, the resale market remains largely frozen — shackled by “golden handcuffs.” You could argue that rates would need to move hundreds of basis points lower to melt the ice, although that’s probably an exaggeration.

Monday’s data suggested new home sales soared in the Northeast and plummeted in the South. Months’ supply was unchanged at 8.3. These figures are very volatile and subject to meaningful revisions so… well, take it with a whole shaker of salt.

I should mention that the high-end segment of the market is apparently still doing well. Toll Brothers hit another record last week after raising its full-year delivery outlook, for example. Toll’s building more spec communities, something that’s readily apparent from the builder’s marketing material. By now, I’ve forgotten when I signed up for their mailing list, although I do remember why I gave them my email address: I was vaguely entertaining the idea of building in North Carolina at one point. Ever since contacting someone through their website, I’ve received an uninterrupted deluge of advertisements for spec communities. So, when CEO Doug Yearley says, as he did on the call last week, that Toll’s “building spec across all of our price points, all of our product lines,” you can trust him on that. My inbox can confirm that claim.

Coming quickly back to Monday’s data, the median new home price in January was $420,700, down 2.64% YoY. It was the fifth straight YoY decline and the ninth in 10, but do note that January’s drop versus the same month a year ago was the shallowest of that entire 10-month period.

The average price last month, $534,300, was up dramatically from December, and marked the first YoY increase since March of last year.

I doubt there’s much more to glean from Monday’s only notable US data release, and even that assumes you gleaned something from everything said above, an optimistic assumption considering I didn’t actually say that much. (I’m just kidding. Every word from my pen is worth poring over.)

Bottom line: America’s housing conundrum persists. Rates are still too high for many buyers, and so are prices. Homeowners who’d need to get a new mortgage in the event they decided to trade up aren’t interested due to the yawning disparity between current financing costs and their existing fixed rate. Builders are doing a decent job backfilling supply (stepping into the void left by the frozen resale market), but whenever rates tick up, they have to start offering more incentives, which erodes margins and confidence. The situation’s nowhere near “normal” and won’t be for quite some time.

Whenever I need a data point to toss in at the tail-end of a housing article, or a handy property punchline, I can always count on Redfin’s news section. God bless Dana Anderson and Lily Katz. “Florida’s condo market is faltering as the increasing intensity of natural disasters pushes up home insurance costs, and HOA fees soar in the wake of the 2021 Surfside condo collapse,” Anderson wrote Monday, noting that in Jacksonville, condo sales fell 27% in January, while new listings jumped 32%.