Market Mover Wednesday: New Home Sales rise; median price falls; Durable goods up…
The durable goods number is not as good as the top line would suggest, see below, but the new home sales and the drop in new home inventory is great news, but again I caution as I think it is driven largely by deep deeeep discounting and the new home buyers tax credit which is about to expire…the unemployment data for August and GDP are our next big data points…
…The Commerce Department said Wednesday that orders for goods expected to last at least three years increased 4.9 percent in July, the third rise in the past four months. Analysts expected a 3 percent increase. Orders for June were revised up to a 1.3 percent drop, from a 2.2 percent decline.Orders for transportation equipment, which rose 18.4 percent, drove the overall increase. Commercial aircraft orders, a volatile category, more than doubled after falling 30 percent in June. Motor vehicle orders increased 0.9 percent.
Excluding transportation goods, orders rose 0.8 percent. That was the third straight increase, but just below analysts’ expectations of a 0.9 percent rise…
Sales of newly built U.S. single-family homes rose for a fourth straight month in July to set their fastest pace since last September, while the inventory of unsold homes fell to the lowest level in 16 years, a government report showed on Wednesday.The Commerce Department said sales rose 9.6 percent to a 433,000 annual pace, the highest in ten months, from an upwardly revised 395,000 in June. That was the biggest monthly percentage gain since a matching increase in February 2005. Analysts polled by Reuters had forecast a 390,000 rate.
Median price down y/y, flat m/m:
The median home sales price in July fell 11.5 percent to $210,100 from a year earlier, the department said. Compared to June, the median price slipped 0.1 percent.
And the inventory is finally falling:
..The inventory of homes available for sale in July fell 3.2 percent to 271,000 units, the lowest since March 1993, the department said.
Mr Blandings clip courtesy of KayMiniver
Moderate in the Middle 