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Economy in Brief
U.S. Federal Government Budget Deficit Shrinks in July
The U.S. Treasury Department reported a federal budget deficit of $211.1 billion in July...
U.S. Mortgage Applications Rose Slightly in the Latest Week
Mortgage applications increased 0.2% (-62.9% y/y) from one week earlier...
German Inflation Rises
The German inflation rate as measured by the HICP accelerated to 8.4% in July...
U.S. Productivity Declines in Q2, Pushing Unit Labor Costs Higher
Nonfarm business sector productivity fell 4.6% (AR) during Q2'22...
U.S. Small Business Optimism Edged Up in July
The NFIB Small Business Optimism Index edged up to 89.9 in July...
Viewpoints
Commentaries are the opinions of the author and do not reflect the views of Haver Analytics.
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 its 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% |