Recent Updates
- Brazil: Economic Activity (May)
- France: France: Producer Cost Indices for Construction (Apr), Financing Access Survey (Q2)
- China: NCI Economic Activity Index (Jul)
- UK: Immigration Statistics (Q4), Rightmove House Price Index (Jul)
- Ireland: International Trade (May)
- Germany: Employment and Turnover in Manufacturing, Productivity & Compensation (May), Number of Households, Labor Force Survey (2017), State CPI: Bremen (Jun)
- more updates...
Economy in Brief
French Retail Sales Rebound In June But Do Not Convince
French retail sales rebounded in June after falling for two consecutive months...
U.S. CPI Increase Moderates; Core Price Gain Steadies
Inflationary pressures moderated last month...
U.S. Government Budget Deficit Widens This Year
The U.S. Treasury Department reported that during the first nine months of fiscal year 2018, the federal government budget deficit totaled $607.1 billion...
U.S. Initial Unemployment Insurance Claims Fall
Initial claims for unemployment insurance dropped to 214,000 during the week ended July 7...
EMU IP Makes Strong May Gain
EMU industrial output expands in all sectors in May...
by Robert Brusca June 26, 2007
Housing is still in the grip of a downtrend but prices are not plunging or even weakening further nor are sales trends worsening; in fact, they are showing some signs of stability. Housing rebounded in April and maintained most of its gain in May - a good sign for the sector. Question: How bad is this??
A tale of two suburbs? Maybe it’s not of two cities but definitely a tale of two suburbs – one affluent and one not. Average house prices are up and strongly at 6.5% year/year. Yes, some of that owes to a weak result a year ago, but not all of it. And year/year price declines for new homes are not very common. Median prices are off for two months running and the last year/year decline was in September of 2006. For average prices, they fell year/year in April 2007; they last fell year/year in November 2006. Obviously high-priced homes are faring better in this housing cycle.
Stability in sales by region is shown in the table below.
| Momentum: Annualized Rates Of Change | Prices | ||||||
| As of: | Total | Northeast | Midwest | South | West | Median | Average |
| May.07 | Month-to-month percent change | ||||||
| May.07 | -1.6% | -11.0% | 30.8% | -7.3% | -1.9% | 1.5% | 4.5% |
| Apr.07 | 12.5% | 3.4% | -7.9% | 22.7% | 8.1% | -9.9% | -7.9% |
| Mar.07 | -1.5% | 91.3% | 0.0% | -10.2% | -3.9% | 3.0% | 1.2% |
| Annualized Rates | |||||||
| Total | Northeast | Midwest | South | West | Median | Average | |
| 3-Mo | 35.7% | 304.3% | 81.9% | 8.7% | 7.8% | -21.5% | -10.2% |
| 6-Mo | -14.6% | 53.1% | 4.0% | -23.9% | -23.6% | -3.3% | 15.1% |
| 1-Yr | -15.8% | 19.1% | -14.5% | -17.9% | -21.1% | -0.9% | 6.5% |
