The report for new homes came out today and whadda ya know. A 4.8% increase? Huh?
Once again lets look at the actual numbers
Last Sept (06) 80,000 new homes
This Sept (07) 60,000 new homes
Last month (aug) 63,000 new homes
So there was a 25% decrease from last year and a 5% decrease from last month.
The beautiful thing these days is that the data is so easy to find. It's just amazing to me that the media does not check the facts before printing headlines like "New Home Sales Rebound in September" as reported by the AP. I did expect better numbers for Sept since that's the month many of the builders had their deals of the century, Gold Star Events, and other promotions. I'm a little surprised that the actual numbers were down. Also keep in mind that these early estimates are usually revised once the actual numbers are known. Lately the revisions have been running about 5% downward. So expect the number to go down another 5%.
6 comments:
I'm confused. the report I read said that 770,000 new houses sold in September. They are talking nationally. Are you saying that they are off by 710,000? If you are referring to a specific region, can you be more specific? Can you refer to the article you got the 4.8% and the website you got the data from?
770,000 is their "guess" of what the year end total will be at the current rate of sales. It's a moving target and one of the primary reasons their reports as such a farce.
Hit the post button to quick
In August they estimated the total annual sales would be 795,000. Then they revised it down to 735,000 later in the month. Now they have upped it to 770,000. But again later once the acual numbers are in they will almost certainly revise it back down again. This number is a GUESS and the way the market is going it could be way off once the year is finished and the ducks are counted.
Now you see why these reprots are such garbage. You just can't make this stuff up!
By the way thanks for doing the article on chino hills I appreciate it.
Sorry anon, I did not answer the question about where I got the data. The data comes from the US Census bureau.
http://www.census.gov/const/newressales.pdf
It's a little hard to read but the numbers you want to look at are on table 2, page 3. Those are the actual #s of homes sold (in thousands). You can see in Spet of 2007 there were 60,000 homes sold. (They round off to the nearest thousand so it could be off +/- 499 homes)
Thanks, you cleared it up for me. I appreciate it. Without seeing the actual months supply sold, I was a bit confused. When the title of an article is "New Home Sales Rise", you think, oh, new home sales rose, not that the PREDICTION of what the year end total will be rose. I am ashamed to admit it, but their sly tactics worked on me this time.
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