We got hit with a variety
of housing market news last week, starting with Monday's reveal that
Existing Home Sales took a bit of a breather in June, dipping 1.8%. But they're
still at a healthy 5.52 million unit annual rate, and up by 0.7% over a year
ago. Economists expect real estate to maintain its overall upward trend
of the last few years. Of course we do have the headwinds of tight supply and
rising prices, with median existing home prices hitting new record highs two
months in a row. But demand stays strong, as 54% of the listings sold in June
were less than a month old.
Tuesday we learned New Home Sales moved up 0.8% in June to a 610,000
unit annual rate, putting them up 9.1% versus a year ago. The supply
increased to 5.4 months, aided by a 3,000 unit gain in inventories. Plus, the
median price of new homes sold was down 3.4% versus last year, indicating
builders are moving in the right direction. More evidence of this came with the
news the homeownership rate increased in Q2 and is up 0.8% from a year
ago, to a three-year high. The chief economist of an national real estate site
believes "we may have turned a corner when it comes to the steep dive in
homeownership we've seen over the past 10 years."
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