Matt Yglesias

13 Responses to “Home Sales Way Up, But Still Very Low”

1. poptarts Says:
   July 27th, 2009 at 5:25 pm

   More green shoots…

2. G-Man Says:
   July 27th, 2009 at 5:36 pm

   Good point. We’re at the point of this cycle where year over year changes will be inceasingly meaningless for many economic indicators. Compared against the cliff-dive late last summer and fall, most anything will look like a big gain.

3. rmwarnick Says:
   July 27th, 2009 at 6:05 pm

   According to the Salt Lake County Assessor’s Office, the value of my house dropped by 40 percent in the past year. Thanks, George Bush! Wish I could do the same for you.

4. Jeffrey Davis Says:
   July 27th, 2009 at 6:34 pm

   Just so long as the sales prices aren’t too low in 10 years when we’ll be selling, good.

5. Walker Says:
   July 27th, 2009 at 7:14 pm

   Sales of new homes in the United States posted their largest monthly gain in eight years in June

   The official figure is 11.0% +/- 13.2%. The technical term for this is “worthless”.

   Oh for journalists that actually understand what “margin of error” means.

6. Stine Says:
   July 27th, 2009 at 7:42 pm

   @ Walker:

   Yes, that’s a very worthless number. In fact, it is so worthless that sales of new homes might have actually decreased in June. We have no way of knowing given this data.

7. DTM Says:
   July 27th, 2009 at 8:02 pm

   Just so long as the sales prices aren’t too low in 10 years when we’ll be selling, good.

   I give it 50-50.

8. ShortWoman Says:
   July 27th, 2009 at 9:38 pm

   Speak for your own region’s real estate sales. Vegas housing prices may have dropped, but that has brought out buyers. Year over year inventory and sales numbers are great here.

9. urban legend Says:
   July 27th, 2009 at 9:42 pm

   Um, that’s what happens when a long-term trend starts to reverse: if it has been really, really low, the improvements will still be really, really low — just not quite as low as they were!

10. bob in fla Says:
    July 27th, 2009 at 9:42 pm

    You fail to mention that the median sale price is still dropping like a stone. Nor did you mention the $8000 tax credit which lowers that price even further for qualified buyers. Or that sales may well fall off within a month or 2 because the credit is good only for homes whose sale is complete before December 2009. And for the harder hit areas of the country, the number of building permits are still dropping.

    Those green shoots everyone is crowing about? They are weeds, folks.

11. DTM Says:
    July 27th, 2009 at 10:34 pm

    As frequently explained at Calculated Risk, there are likely going to be two housing bottoms: new home sales, housing starts, and residential investment will likely bottom first, and then at some later point–maybe multiple years later in some markets–there will be a housing price bottom. We may already be at the first bottom (knock on wood), which is good because that means the housing sector may stop being a drag and may even start contributing positively to GDP and employment. But homeowners looking for a bottom in prices may be waiting quite a while yet.

12. ADM Says:
    July 27th, 2009 at 11:17 pm

    “It’s true that this was a big month-to-month change, but if you look at it overall sales volume was still quite low; lower than at any month in 2003 or 2004 or 2005 or 2006 or 2007 and also lower than January, February, March, April, May, June, July, or August of 2008.”

    But those are all bubble months. Isn’t it a good thing that sales have dropped from their bubble-volume?

13. cliff Says:
    July 28th, 2009 at 2:58 pm

    WoooHooo. green shoots. so there were more foreclosures than sales. Yea, that’s a green shoot alright, in the now deserted lawn.