Mish
One can't help but laugh at headlines touting a huge 23.% jump in new home sales given that the "jump" was to the second worst month in history, dating back to 1963.
Dave Rosenberg puts the headline jump into perspective in Housing Data Are Not Supportive.
Market sentiment is positive and as a result of the market going straight up, people believe that the economic data are somehow getting better. Not the case at all.
April new home sales were revised DOWN to a 422k annual rate from 504k when the data for the month were first released. You know what that means? It means that the homebuyer tax credit was even a bigger dud than we thought it was previously. No bang for the buck from these spending gimmicks.
May new home sales were revised DOWN to 267k units from 300k. That sure puts a 23.6% "jump" to 330k into perspective, doesn't it? It's called bear market math.
At 330k in June, this goes down as the second worst month on record (data back to January 1963). And in per capita terms it is far worse than that considering the population has expanded 63% since then.
New Home Sales and Bear Market Math
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