A Housing Market Cycle Different From Others
By FLOYD NORRIS
NYT
TO judge by the overall level of home sales in the United States, the housing market has stabilized at a level well below the peak period of 2005 and 2006 but still higher than the sales rates that characterized prosperous periods in the 1980s and 1990s. Still, few of those sales are of new homes and a rising proportion are forced sales of homes no longer worth the amount that was borrowed.
As can be seen in the accompanying chart, during the 12 months through February, about 46 homes were sold for every 1,000 households in the country. At the peak of the housing boom, that figure rose above 75, but the current level is significantly higher than the lows reached during the recessions of the early 1980s and early 1990s.
The sales rate for existing homes — about 4.9 million over the last 12 months — is virtually the same as in mid-1999. Yet sales of newly built single-family homes have plunged to the lowest levels seen since the government began collecting statistics on such sales in 1963. The Census Bureau reported this week that only 17,000 new homes were sold in February, for an annual rate of 250,000 after taking seasonal factors into account. Both of those numbers are the lowest on record.
The February sales pace was undoubtedly depressed by harsh weather in the Northeast, and a rebound in March or April is possible. But the total number of homes sold over the 12-month period — 349,000 — is lower than in any comparable period.
(More here.)
NYT
TO judge by the overall level of home sales in the United States, the housing market has stabilized at a level well below the peak period of 2005 and 2006 but still higher than the sales rates that characterized prosperous periods in the 1980s and 1990s. Still, few of those sales are of new homes and a rising proportion are forced sales of homes no longer worth the amount that was borrowed.
As can be seen in the accompanying chart, during the 12 months through February, about 46 homes were sold for every 1,000 households in the country. At the peak of the housing boom, that figure rose above 75, but the current level is significantly higher than the lows reached during the recessions of the early 1980s and early 1990s.
The sales rate for existing homes — about 4.9 million over the last 12 months — is virtually the same as in mid-1999. Yet sales of newly built single-family homes have plunged to the lowest levels seen since the government began collecting statistics on such sales in 1963. The Census Bureau reported this week that only 17,000 new homes were sold in February, for an annual rate of 250,000 after taking seasonal factors into account. Both of those numbers are the lowest on record.
The February sales pace was undoubtedly depressed by harsh weather in the Northeast, and a rebound in March or April is possible. But the total number of homes sold over the 12-month period — 349,000 — is lower than in any comparable period.
(More here.)
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