Real Estate Sales
The Commerce Department just reported new homes increased 7.6 percent in May from April … that’s the fastest pace in 2 years!
Even with that good news, the sales numbers are less than half what economists consider to be healthy.
New homes represent less than 20 percent of the housing market, but, the National Association of Home Builders says each home built creates an average of three jobs for a year and generates about $90,000 in tax revenue!
Real Estate Sales
Naturally, all real estate is local, so let’s take a look how the new home sales did by region. The greatest increase last month was in the Northeast, where new home sales jumped 36.7%! Next, there was a 12.7% increase in the South. Here in the West, unfortunately new-home sales for May were actually down 3.5%! But, at least we weren’t on the bottom of the four US regions. Yes, the worst result for new-home sales in May was in the Midwest where they saw a 10.6% drop!
So, I’m hoping that the huge increase in the Northeast sets the trend that will head westward in the coming months. Unfortunately, the latest unemployment figures are dismal to say the least, and so I remain somewhat cautious as to whether this is true base building or at a false start in the long-awaited real estate recovery.
