Another Perspective on Today’s Strong Housing Numbers
Following today’s better than expected housing numbers (See Housing Starts and Permits Surge Most in Seven Years) Doug Short at Advisor Perspectives pinged me with these comments.
Mish – I started tracking these for the first time today – complete historical data. These are two of the noisiest series of all time.
Take a look at the charts, especially the population-adjusted versions. You’ll see why you need at least a 3-month moving average to get an idea of the real trend direction and slope. And check out where the latest data points put us relative to the total series.
Starts: New Residential Housing Starts Surge in April
Permits: New Residential Building Permits Rise 10.1% in AprilBottom line: take the April data with a grain of salt … maybe a tablespoon full.
Privately Owned Housing Starts
click on any chart for sharper image
Housing Starts as Percent of Population
NAHB Housing Market Index
If you ask the builders, sales conditions are very good with a score of 59. Sales expectations rose to an excellent score of 64. Meanwhile, actual lookers score a very poor 39.
Average it all together and you get the totally useless chart above.
Housing Market Index Components
Yesterday afternoon I asked the NAHB for the subcomponent data. Here is a chart I put together today from that data.
Note the actual traffic of prospective buyers vs. sales expectations six months out.
Mike “Mish” Shedlock
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com
Bottom line: Nothing to cheer about. I’m renting at present but would buy if prices decline by 50%.
Home prices are plummeting around here, all the house flippers from 2007 afterwards have been losing their shirts.
The most recent tragedy is about five blocks from my house. They bought a house to flip that was pretty rough for ~150k. They flipped it and yes it looks amazing, but they want 580k for it.
Up and down the street are houses selling for 150-200k, with the most premier homes valued at 350k.
What the fuck is wrong with people. Every where I look I see shit that just plain pisses me off.
Its one of the reasons I don’t frequent here as often, I have enough internalized negativity without you guys showing me more shit to get pissed about 😛
TPC,
You still have a beautiful wife and you are young. At least you can enjoy that.
Bob.