New home sales are up...barely...but still 21.5 percent lower than last year
New home sales numbers are so weak that it looks like the Homebuyer Tax Credit actually hurt more than it helped.
Sales of newly constructed homes (blue line) are up 6 percent from last month, but still more than 20 percent below last year (orange line).
SoldAtTheTop / The Paper Economy
Today, the U.S. Census Department released its monthly New Residential Home Sales Report for September showing continued weakness with sales climbing 6.6% since August to 307K annualized units, near the lowest level on record.
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'SoldAtTheTop' is not a pessimist by nature but a true skeptic and realist who prefers solid and sustained evidence of fundamental economic recovery to 'Goldilocks,' 'Green Shoots,' 'Mustard Seeds,' and wholesale speculation.
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On a year-over-year basis, new single family home sales plunged a whopping 21.5% while the monthly supply increased 3.9% to 8.0 months.
These results provide even more evidence that the government's housing tax scam policy was ultimately a complete and total failure accomplishing nothing but creating a temporary distortion of the underlying "organic" housing trends.
With numbers this weak, it could even be argued that the government's tax gimmick ultimately destabilized the nation's home markets by injecting a substantial amount of uncertainty, sponsoring feeble home buyers and preventing the natural market clearing mechanism from playing out.
The following charts show the extent of sales decline (click for full-larger version).
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