September 2015 New Home Sales Crashes

Written by John Lounsbury and Steven Hansen

The headlines say new home sales significantly declined from last month (even though last month was revised downward). The rolling averages smooth out much of the uneven data produced in this series – and this month there was a deceleration in the rolling averages.

As the data is noisy, the 3 month rolling average is the way to look at this data. This data series is suffering from methodology issues. Econintersect analysis:

unadjusted sales growth decelerated 22.3 % month-over-month (after last month’s revised deceleration of 3.4 %).

unadjusted year-over-year sales down 2.7 % (Last month was up 19.4 %). Growth this month is on the low end of the range of growth seen last 12 months.

three month unadjusted trend rate of growth decelerated 6.3 % month-over-month – is up 13.0 % year-over-year.

Unadjusted Year-over-Year Rate of Growth – Sales (blue line) and 3 1month rolling average of Sales (red line)

US Census Headlines:

seasonally adjusted sales down 11.5 % month-over-month

seasonally adjusted year-over-year sales up 2.0 %

market expected (from Bloomberg) seasonally adjusted annualized sales of 535 K to 560 K (consensus 549 K) versus the actual at 468 K.

The quantity of new single family homes for sale remains well below historical levels.

Seasonally Adjusted New Homes for Sale

As the sales data is noisy (large monthly variations).

Year-over-Year Change – Unadjusted New Home Sales Volumes (blue line) with zero growth line emphasized

The headlines of the data release:

Sales of new single-family houses in September 2015 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 468,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is 11.5 percent (±11.3%) below the revised August rate of 529,000, but is 2.0 percent (±17.9%)* above the September 2014 estimate of 459,000.