Current Housing Indicators |
| CURRENT | PREVIOUS | ||
| Existing Home Sales | 4.49m | ▼ | 4.74m |
| New Home Sales | 309,000 | ▼ | 344,000 |
| Housing Starts | 583,000 | ▲ | 477,000 |
| Building Permits | 547,000 | ▲ | 531,000 |
| HMI | 9 | UNCH | 9 |
| Existing Home Prices | $170,300 | ▼ (annually) | $199,800 |
| New Home Prices | $201,100 | ▼ (annually) | $232,400 |
More Videos
- Citi Mortgage Reveals What Treasury Won't
- Investors May Skew Housing Reality
- 100% Mortgage Financing From USDA
- Despite Government Aid, Foreclosure Crisis is Not Improving
- Housing Data Delivers Mixed Messages
- Appraisals Now Center Stage in Housing Recovery
- Underwater Mortgages Could Sink Even Deeper
- First Time Buyers Rescue Housing: Realtors
- Housing Recovery 'Still In Uncharted Territory': HUD Secretary
- Shadow Inventory Dwarfs Loan Mods
MOST SHARED
- The 'Real' Jobless Rate: 17.5% Of Workers Are Unemployed
- Obama Reiterates Commitment to Boost US-India Ties
- Australia Wheat Exporters Face Challenges: GrainCorp
- Stifling Anger at Work Can Kill, Survey Finds
- The Social Media Gaming Threat
- Starbucks Eyes China as Next Major Market
- Japan Export Rebound Eases Fear of New Recession
- Americans Ditch Planes for Trains this Thanksgiving
- Investors Bet on a New Year's Rally For eBay
- Why You Should Play the Reflation Trade: Stock Picker
- Citi Mortgage Reveals What Treasury Won't
- S&P to Hit 1,200 by Year-End: Chief Investor
- Amended Berkshire Hathaway Filing Indicates No Secret Stock Stakes at End of Q3
- Facebook's Biggest-Ever Holiday Shopping Season
- Facebook's New Dual Class Structure - Slow Steps to an IPO
- 5 Big Bank Stocks Investors Should Consider: Strategists
- Gambling Drunk, Texting to Live And America's On Sale - Your Emails
- AIG Board OKs CEO Pay; Benmosche Agrees to Stay
- Mortgage Demand Slips as Rates Hold Near Lows
- Half of Banks' Losses May Still Be Hidden: IMF Head
- Deere Reports Quarterly Net Loss, Revenue Falls
- Tiffany Profit Higher Than Expected; Raises Outlook
- Americans Ditch Planes for Trains this Thanksgiving
- FDIC's Bair Cautions on Risks in Bank Break-Up Plan
- Call Me Crazy: Confessions of a Black Friday Shopper
- Turkey Day 101: How Well Do You Know Your Bird?
RSS FEED
Realty Check
Text Size 
 |
CNBC.com |
Yes, that was sales activity (contracts signed actually) in August, before the Fannie-Freddie takeover, before Lehman's demise, before AIG's [AIG
Loading...
()
] takeover and before even a whisper of a $700 billion bailout.
It’s also important to note the difference between the existing home sales number we got yesterday and the new home sales number we got today. The National Association of Realtors, which measures existing home sales, bases its number on closings, not contracts signed, so these are homes that actually changed hands.
The US Commerce Department, which tallies new home sales, bases its figure on contracts signed. Given the enormous percentage of cancellations in new home sales (recently around the 30-40% range for the big public builders) many of these sales will never actually come to fruition. In other words, that nasty sales level is even nastier than it looks.
Last month many of the analysts in the new-home-builder-know were starting to use the word “bottom,” maybe not for housing starts, but for sales. Prices were down and the market was already buying into the builder stocks (the market tends to anticipate the bottom a few months previous). But when I see inventories rise, and that’s months supply, not actual number of homes, which the builders managed to cut by 4 percent, I have to call that bottom into question again.
Now the big builders will say they are looking forward to that $7,500 tax break for new home buyers that came out of this summer’s housing rescue bill, but given what’s going on in the credit markets right now, I wonder how much that’s going to matter.
Here’s a suggestion: Instead of dumping 700 billion dollars onto Wall Street and watching the bottom feeders shovel it up, why not do some of that, but take one hundred billion of my precious tax dollars and buy up the inventory of new homes (at the median price of $221,900 you could buy 450,653, which is almost exactly the current inventory of new homes for sale). Take those homes and give them, with manageable low-rate FHA loans, to all the folks who lost their homes to foreclosure.
It could make a nice return for the government in the long run and would put jobs back into one of America’s manufacturing sectors, not to mention pump a bit of stock price back into the public builders. It might also stabilize home prices, which in turn would allow folks to keep paying their mortgages, which, oh my goodness, might put a little value back into all those mortgage-backed securities that are bringing down Wall Street to begin with.
Just a thought.
Questions? Comments?
Data is a real-time snapshot *Data is delayed at least 15 minutes