Good news: New housing sales up Bad news: Price down

[c1ue]

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070524/...PwVvNKNPgc1vAI

The Commerce Department reported that sales of new single-family homes jumped by 16.2 percent in April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 981,000 units.

However, the median price of a new home sold last month fell to $229,100, a record 11.1 percent decline from the previous month.

From Census.gov: ASP: $299,100

To put this in perspective:

April 2006: 1,198,000 with ASP: $298,300, median price: $238,500

April 2005: 1,316,000 with ASP: $283,500, median price: $230,800

Yoy (4/06 - 4/07): 18.1% decline in volume, 2.7% gain in ASP, 4.1% decline in median price

Yo2y (4/05 - 4/07): 25.5% decline in volume, 5.5% gain in ASP, 0.7% decline in median price

While it might seem that the 4/07 decreasing median would reflect even sales across the board, I would argue that this actually confirms the ongoing trend of higher priced houses selling, but the low end of the market essentially disappearing.

New home sellers/builders must get rid of inventory as they don't have any other utility for these houses, so clearly they are 'fire sale'ing them.

It would be interesting to see if there were also significant concessions which further impacted the actual sale price.

I would bet money on that...

Just for grins:

April 2003: 1,028,000, ASP: $235,100, median: $185,100

April 2001: 894,000, ASP: $199,700, median: $165,600

April 2000: 909,000, ASP: $208,000, median: $161,400

Any questions on whether mean reversion has begun?

Assuming 3% inflation from 2001 onward (probably conservative w/ regards to materials costs), this would mean approx. ASP: $238,500 and median $197,700 vs. the 2001 numbers.

Vs. 2003 numbers: approx. ASP: $264,600, median: $208,300

[Spartacus]

Re: Good news: New housing sales up Bad news: Price down

Is 11% really a fire-sale?

Where would the money/credit to do these sales be coming from?

Has anyone noticed a hiring up-tick from the mortgage brokerage industry?

I personally did not think this level of sales would happen at only an 11% discount from peak. Or is this the early "buy the dip, what a steal !!!! -ers" who get gored as the bear market advances further than they believed it could?

Are breakdowns available by what portions of the market sold?

Perhaps this is the reification of Dr. Hudson's thesis that the rich will sell but the poor will be locked into declining prices for a decade.

Although the 11% price drop argues it's not only the higher-price houses that sold, because the prediction was the overall average sales price would seem to increase as the higher price houses selling skew the data.

[zoog]

Re: Good news: New housing sales up Bad news: Price down

ongoing trend of higher priced houses selling, but the low end of the market essentially disappearing

Dr. Hudson's thesis that the rich will sell but the poor will be locked into declining prices for a decade

I'm certainly not a statistician, but from my understanding of median, and some simplified experiments in Excel, I think that a declining median home price means more lower priced homes are selling than higher priced homes.

My take on this report is that homebuilders dropped prices on what previously would have been upper-end homes in order to sell them at all... hence an increase in sales and a decrease in median price. Fire-sale might be overstating it a bit, but if we could get our hands on the numbers showing what these houses were originally intended to sell for, vs what they actually sold for, I bet we would see some significant price reductions at the upper and middle levels, but relatively steady prices at the bottom. And as c1ue alluded to, the sales prices don't show us all the "freebies" the builders likely threw in.

Has anyone noticed a hiring up-tick from the mortgage brokerage industry?

I keep reading about layoffs in the mortgage lenders, and yet according to this article, Countrywide is hiring 2000 people and planning to open 100 branches this year.:confused:

I have to post this quote from Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo about proposed subprime regulation:

Regulation, in my opinion, has caused part of the problem. When they attacked the pay option and interest-only loans, that really put a dent in a lot of the product, which is perfectly good product.

I keep waiting for Countrywide to show up in red on the Implode-O-Meter...

[c1ue]

Re: Good news: New housing sales up Bad news: Price down

Is 11% really a fire-sale?

Yes, if this is just a 1 year delta. After all, if 20% down is considered safe, an 11% reduction in price in a short period of time would seem to indicate that 20% equity is no longer an adequate gauge of 'safe equity' in a house.

Where would the money/credit to do these sales be coming from?

Just because mortgage activity is slowing does not mean it has stopped. Also the possibility of 'owner financing' cannot be discounted: for example the builder offering to pay 1 or more points on a new loan.

Has anyone noticed a hiring up-tick from the mortgage brokerage industry?

I have seen this, but it is too early to say if the mortgage industry has truly turned the corner, or if surviving companies are seeking to increase market share, or perhaps even that some portion of the previous sub-prime servers are now working areas such as foreclosure management.

I personally did not think this level of sales would happen at only an 11% discount from peak. Or is this the early "buy the dip, what a steal !!!! -ers" who get gored as the bear market advances further than they believed it could?

I am 100% positive that it is too early to be at maximum trough depth. But dead cat bounces are a reality.

Are breakdowns available by what portions of the market sold?

Actually yes: http://www.census.gov/const/newressales_200704.pdf

By numbers of houses sold (in thousands):

Date	Under $150K	150K to 199,999	$200K to $299,999	$300K to $399,999	$400K to $499,999	$500K to $749,999	$750K and up
Apr-05	20	23	32	18	10	9	3
Apr-06	16	17	28	18	8	9	4
Apr-07	17	22	22	14	6	6	4

By percent distribution

Date	Under $150K	150K to 199,999	$200K to $299,999	$300K to $399,999	$400K to $499,999	$500K to $749,999	$750K and up
Apr-05	18	20	28	16	8	8	3
Apr-06	16	17	28	18	8	9	4
Apr-07	18	24	24	15	7	6	5

Several notes:

1) Absolute numbers of houses sold are consistently down trending in most categories from 2005-2007 except for the $750K+ and under $150K.

However, I believe it takes at least $100K to build a house, so the under $150K might represent something else such as mobile homes or perhaps subsidized low income housing.

2) In general the percentage distribution seems to be shifting from the $300K/$400K breaks further down. It could be argued that the lower end of the $500K is falling into the $400K, the lower $400K into the $300K, etc with the remainder collecting in the $150K range. This would seem to shift the median downward and would seem to tend to push the average down.

3) While $750K+ homes are higher both in number and percentage, the relative contribution of these houses (5% in 2007, 3% in 2005) would not seem to make up for the overall distribution change in price categories.

However, if I make a calculation based on the midpoint of each category multiplied by its percentage weight then sum each year:

(i.e. for 4/05: (75K * 0.18) + (175K * .20) + (250K * .28) + (350K * .16) + (450K * .08) + (1000K * .03) = $289.5K

Date	Under $150K	150K to 199,999	$200K to $299,999	$300K to $399,999	$400K to $499,999	$500K to $749,999	$750K and up
Apr-05	13.5	35	70	56	36	49	30	289.5
Apr-06	12	29.75	70	63	36	55.125	40	305.875
Apr-07	13.5	42	60	52.5	31.5	36.75	50	286.25

You will note that this calculation would be consistent with the 2005 to 2006 ASP rise, but indicates that should be an ASP fall from 2006 to 2007 unless the distribution within each category also changed.

A higher ASP combined with a lower median fits with the data showing the percentage distribution of homes sold slipping down categories, but the high end staying consistent (and evidently also increasing in ASP).

Note that using 1500K for the high end 'midpoint' for all 3 years does not skew the trend of the results.

While only an example, shifting the 'midpoint' for the $750K category by $400K for just 2007 yields an example quite close to the actual data.

Date	Under $150K	150K to 199,999	$200K to $299,999	$300K to $399,999	$400K to $499,999	$500K to $749,999	$750K and up
Apr-05	13.5	35	70	56	36	49	30	289.5
Apr-06	12	29.75	70	63	36	55.125	40	305.875
Apr-07	13.5	42	60	52.5	31.5	36.75	70	306.25

Another similar example is to increase the 'midpoints' for all categories except under $150K and $150K by 10% up.

Date	Under $150K	150K to 199,999	$200K to $299,999	$300K to $399,999	$400K to $499,999	$500K to $749,999	$750K and up
Apr-05	13.5	35	70	56	36	49	30	289.5
Apr-06	12	29.75	70	63	36	55.125	40	305.875
Apr-07	13.5	42	66	57.75	34.65	40.425	55	309.325

[flow5]

Re: Good news: New housing sales up Bad news: Price down

Bernanke's speech 17th
The Subprime Mortgage Market

The recent sharp increases in subprime mortgage loan delinquencies and in the number of homes entering foreclosure raise important economic, social, and regulatory issues.