Alarm! US New Home Sales Crash In November, Despite Plunging Rates (New Home Sales Down -12.2% From October)

Confounded Interest ^ | 12/22/2023 | Anthony B. Sanders

[Kaiser8408a]

Alarm! New home sales dropped like Biden’s popularity in November, down -12.2% from October.

While existing home sales bounced very modestly off record lows in November, it has been the ‘strength’ of new home sales – with buyer heavily subsidized by homebuilders – that has held up the housing market.

Of course, investors don’t care about actual fundamentals, rates are down so ‘buy buy buy’ the builders…

Source: Bloomberg

Trouble is, even as mortgage rates have plunged recently, applications for home purchases has continued to decline…

Source: Bloomberg

And while mortgage rates have declined (rapidly), they remain massively high relative to the effective mortgage rate for all Americans. That difference is the ‘subsidy‘ that homebuilders have to fill to enable buyers – and it’s still yuuuge!

So, just how many new homes were sold in November?

The last few months have been very choppy for new home sales but November clarified that homebuilders just hit a wall on their subsidization!

New home sales crashed 12.2% MoM – the biggest MoM drop since April 2022. That dragged the YoY change to just 1.4%…

9 of the last 10 months have seen downward revisions to the new home sales SAAR!

[Sacajaweau]

Let me tell you how this works. There are plenty of houses on the market and they will back up over time.

The...the government will come to the rescue and give substantial monies to buyers. Now won't you be happy to help buy someone's home and pay for their college loan and pay for a piece of their EV?

Something is very wrong when us hardworking folks have to pay for someone else's "stuff".

[CodeToad]

“plunging mortgage rates”? Pure lies, communist propaganda.

The rates are holding at 7.5%.

[faucetman]

“Alarm! US New Home Sales Crash In November, Despite Plunging Rates (New Home Sales Down -12.2% From October)”

There was just an article about a BIG BOOM in home construction in spite of high interest rates.

How can these two things be true?

I don’t believe the one about record new home starts. Why in this environment would any contractor build new homes?

It was a rhetorical question.

1. THEY LIE!

2. Its the “political season”. ALL lies are permissible. (UNLESS, you are Trump, then the TRUTH is impermissible.)

[fuente]

Some younger single grandma type just bought the new house next to us for $750K. Just wow!

[sevlex]

Orwell would love it...”Plunging to the Moon”!

[Ikeon]

its all lies. Contractors are building new single family homes as fast as they can. the logging trucks and cement trucks are always on the road.

the baby boomers are moving south to retire and buying homes sight unseen. looking at a virtual tour.

[Dr. Sivana]

Contractors are building new single family homes as fast as they can.

Yup. People have to live somewhere. Interest rates are higher than they were, but hardly historically high. The bade news is that wages and salaries are not keeping up.

Here in Phoenix, there are jobs, and housing is going up like crazy. The lots are postage stamp sized, but they are going up.

[CapnJack]

I wish new home sales were crashing and the price of construction was coming down.

I have 10 acres in Florida that we want to build on, but every year since 2019 the price of building is up 50% and the size of the house we can afford is getting smaller.

We own our current home in NH (no mortgage) but what we could get for it wouldn’t even buy us a 1400 sqft new home in FL.

[lurk]

Housing markets are distinctly regional right now, with historically large state-to-state migration and the border invasion the size of Sheila J Lee’s dress.

[CodeToad]

“Here in Phoenix, there are jobs, and housing is going up like crazy. The lots are postage stamp sized, but they are going up.”

Here in Panama City, FLA, same thing. Lots of new homes but really, really small.