New Home Sales

It is hard to tell why the Federal Reserve moved so quickly into QE3 this past week. Was this move necessary with mortgage rates already in negative territory?

It’s not like anvils are flying low, nor shoes dropping.

No major news, but jittery here.

No fun.

Since QEternity was announced, the spread between the 30Y mortgage and 10Y Treasury has collapsed from an already very tight (in anticipation of QE3) level to simply incredible levels. Following our comments on Friday about the relative 'safety' of mortgages over Treasuries, the compression from over 60bps pre-Ben to a mere 22bps now is incredible and just highlights how entirely distorted any signaling from any rate market has become. The point remains that lower absolute mortgage rates (which are notably not as exuberant as this relative risk spread would suggest) have not in the recent past provided notable pick-up in the new home sales (which is where real growth in the economy comes from) and furthermore, the benefits to the consumer of further mortgage rate cuts (based on recent JPMorgan work) is around $5bn per annum for every 25bps improvement in the mortgage rate (a drop in the ocean for a consumer who spends $11 trillion per year).

Looking at the headline number in the just released New Home Sales data one would be left with the impression that the tepid "recovery" in housing may be chugging along: after all with a seasonally adjusted annualized 372,000 new homes sold in July, this was an improvement to the revised 359K in June (ignoring that the US housing market at best continues to drag along the bottom). This impression, however, promptly changes when one looks at the underlying data. The reality: the actual number of new homes sold in July was 34,000, the same as in June, and the lowest since March. Of this, a massive 3,000 (yes, three thousand) homes were sold in the Northeast in the entire month. Where things get worse is when one looks at the number of new homes for sale. At 142,000 (of which just 38,000 actually completed), this was the lowest number. EVER. And finally, to ruin all hopes that the housing bottom may mean an actual pricing bottom, the median new home price slid to $224,200, down from $229,100 in June, and the lowest since January, while the average home price declined from $266,900 to $263,200. This was the lowest average price posted so far in 2012.

The market has reached a level where only recurring hopes and prayers of incremental monetization and easing by one or more central banks have any impact. For the past two months it has been primarily the ECB which continues to talk a lot but do nothing, with infrequent and false speculation that the Fed will step in during the annual Jackson Hole pilgrimage in 10 days and add more reasons to send gasoline to all time highs for this time of year 2 short months ahead of the election. It won't. Which always left the PBOC. However, as we have repeatedly explained, concerns about food inflation have and will keep China in check for a long time. The market finally appears to have grasped this last night, when the regional Asian markets reacted accordingly, and the dour theme has merely carried over into Europe and now the US, especially following the ECB's sound refutation of the Spiegel fishing expedition.

Markets taking any negative news as additional must-have accelerators of a bail-out.

Time being of the essence.

But what if things just drag on? 

While it would appear that all news is good news; good news (or no news) is better news; and old-news is the best news; here is your one stop summary of all the notable bullish and bearish events in the past seven days.

But, but, but... the housing recovery. Was demand pulled forward? Could it be that warm weather encouraged people to venture out of their igloos? It appears so as new home sales plunge 8.4% MoM on expectations of a rise of 0.7%, days after the already fudged NAR data showed a huge miss in existing home sales as well. This is the first miss since October of last year and the biggest miss of expectations since October 2010. This is the biggest absolute drop since January with the actual number of new homes sold, not annualized, in June was 33,000 - of which a mere 1,000 was in the NorthEast. Median home prices also fell appreciably. Hope.is.fading as we note that of the 33,000 total new houses sold in June, 11,000 have not even been started, and 11,000 are still under construction and the number of homes sold at a price over $750,000 was less than 1,000.

Lumber giant Universal Forest Products’ CEO Matt Missad said in the company’s latest earnings conference call, “We are watching our inventories closely and trying not to get too far ahead because we are concerned about disappointing employment figures and lack of  construction growth in the U.S.” Rather than observe the trends in the Mortgage Bankers Association’s headline Mortgage Applications Index, which includes refinancing, a far better gauge of economic conditions is the Mortgage Purchases Index trends. This weekly representation of demand for mortgages related to home buying is little changed from levels registered at the bottom of the housing market collapse. The level of residential housing construction is an important indicator, and has made little improvement since the apparent market bottom in 2009. The sunken pace of residential construction spending in May was $268 billion – essentially the same levels seen in 1997. This  profoundly low level of activity is not limited to the residential sector; spending on commercial structures is currently the same as in 1996. Since there is diminished activity, the need for workers in the construction industry has also stagnated. During June construction employment totaled 5.5 million workers – a near 30 percent decline from the peak in April 2006 and the same number as in mid 1996.

The decrease in nationwide inventory is an ongoing trend. 

Today, new home sales came in at 369K, a "big beat" to expectations of a 347K print and up from the 343K previously. What does this mean? The chart below sums it up.

 What is going on with the housing market?

All you need to read and some more.

PIMCO vs GARY SHILLING - ROUND 1