November 2015 New Home Sales Improve But Rolling Averages Still Decline

Written by John Lounsbury and Steven Hansen

The headlines say new home sales improved from last month (however the last few months data 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 accelerated 9.7 % month-over-month (after last month’s revised acceleration of 10.8 %).

unadjusted year-over-year sales up 9.7 % (Last month was up 0.0 %). Growth this month average for the range of growth seen last 12 months.

three month unadjusted trend rate of growth decelerated 1.8 % month-over-month – is down 0.9 % 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 up 4.3 % month-over-month

seasonally adjusted year-over-year sales up 9.1 %

market expected (from Bloomberg) seasonally adjusted annualized sales of 479 K to 531 K (consensus 503 K) versus the actual at 490 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 November 2015 were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 490,000, according to estimates released jointly today by the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. This is 4.3 percent (±11.9%)* above the revised October rate of 470,000 and is 9.1 percent (±20.9%)* above the November 2014 estimate of 449,000.