On the heels of a 9.2 percent drop from December to January, the seasonally adjusted pace of new single-family home sales ticked up 2.0 percent to 512,000 in February but slipped 6.1 percent on a year-over-year basis, a drop from 5.2 percent lower the month before.
The annual pace of new single-family home sales as measured in February has average 647,000 over the past fifty-four years and peaked at 1,319,000 in 2005, 158 percent higher than last month.
And in terms of inventory, the number of new single-family homes for sale across the county is currently 240,000, up 1.7 percent from the month before, 17.6 percent higher versus the same time last year, and the highest as measured in February since 2009.
In the West, the pace of new single-family home sales jumped 38.5 percent from January to an annual pace of 151,000 sales in February, which is 10.2 percent higher versus the same time last year.
Higher prices, less sales, imagine that. It’s only a matter of time before we run out of “greater fools” willing and able to buy at the peak of the market, then perhaps a not so gentle drop back to reality. Although I’m sure the government and the banks will try their best to loosen lending standards to prop up home values, it will take more extreme measures this time, since 90% of Americans are basically tapped out.
I though I was in SockSite land, but two days and only one post on the thread about home sales and none on the thread about the median price drop?
Meanwhile hundreds of new posters are going on and on about some clowns bringing them canapes in a tent?
If the housing market falls in a forest of stilt walkers will it make a sound?
The first rule of realtor club is, “buy now or be priced out forever,” i.e. prices always go up. Any evidence showing the contrary must be ignored in order to avoid the cognitive dissonance caused by the contradictions between their self-interested worldview and reality. Therefore, this post does not exist!
Really, truly, awful writing there two beers. The Fight Club reference, scare quotes tacked on, then talking about cognitive dissonance when the post contains the following?
“In the West, the pace of new single-family home sales jumped 38.5 percent from January to an annual pace of 151,000 sales in February, which is 10.2 percent higher versus the same time last year.”
Did you graduate from high school? Putrid stuff.
This time it’s different.
Last time: Scare tactics are dead…
This time: Scare quotes are dead…
fluj does tend to come unhinged whenever anyone points out that realtors can be quite disingenuous.
anon- I’m not calling realtors liars, though some may be. My point is that the echo chamber of realtors, bankers, developers, and landlords on most posts here operates on a belief in the real estate economy as a virtuous machine for creating ever expanding property values, and that due to the mechanism of cognitive dissonance (that influences all of us), they can’t see that property values that increase exponentially beyond the ability of a society to afford them hollows out that society, inevitably leading to a crash in property values.That’s why comments tend to be sparse on socketsite posts on declining sales.
Upton Sinclair said it best: “It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it”
I prefer Downtown Sinclair.