Despite a huge upside surprise in existing home sales (to highest SAAR since 2006), analysts expected a small drop MoM in new home sales in August (which makes some sense after the colossal rebound in the last 3 months to well above the pre-COVID levels and the largest YoY jump since 1992!).
But, in keeping with the recent trend, new home sales beat expectations with a 4.8% MoM rise (-1.2% MoM exp) but we do note that YoY growth in sales slowed very modestly from 28 year highs…
…to 1.011mm SAAR (well above the 890k SAAR expected)…This is the first time new home sales SAAR is above 1mm since Sept 2006…
Mixed picture across regions with the Midwest sales down 21.7% MoM (and West -1.7% MoM), while sales in the South surged 13.4% MoM and the Northeast saw sales rises 5.0% MoM.
Notably, while existing home prices surged to a new record high, median new home price fell 4.3% y/y to $312,800; average selling price at $369,000. – READ MORE
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