Today's data deluge continues with the latest New Home Sales in which we find that in October a total of 495K new homes were sold, of which just 146K completed (the lowest in the past year), 172K under construction and a whopping 177K houses sold which have not even been started - this was the highest print since 2007. Still, the headline number, while rising from last month's downward revised 447K missed expectations of a a 500K print.
As the chart below shows, new home construction has plateaued and has been in decline ever since February of 2015 when it posted its post-recession peak of 545K. But what is more troubling is that the median price of new homes tumbled from 307,800 in September, or the highest in the series history to just $281,500, the lowest in 13 months!
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In other words, either the series is quite inaccurate or there was a dramatic change in buying behavior in the last month (when all that was bad was blamed on warm weather).
