Categories: New Home Sales

What to Make of the 11% New Home Sales Surge

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on July 27

New home sales rocketed up 11% in June (from the previous month) to a seasonally-adjusted annual rate of 384,000 units, the Commerce Department said today. It was the largest monthly...

Lenders to Tell Homeowners When Mortgage is Sold

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on May 18

Got this note from California Senator Barbara Boxer: The Senate recently passed an amendment (SA 1035) I authored requiring that homeowners be alerted within 30 days if their lender...

If the home builders are nervous, what does that mean for the rest of us?

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on November 19

The builders are about as pessimistic as they've ever been. Yesterday, we learned that the National Association of Home Builders/Wells Fargo Housing Market Index, which tracks builder sentiment, fell to...

New homes were selling last month -- at least until the financial crisis

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on October 27

It seems that the financial crisis arrived last month at a time when new home sales were finally kicking into gear. Seasonally adjusted new home sales contracts jumped unexpectedly by...

Builders scale back, but not as fast as buyers dry up

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on September 26

Residential developers, during the boom, built, sold, and then built some more. Now they're taking a welcome breather. The new home inventory is the lowest it has been since August...

New home construction report -- worse than it looks

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on July 17

A survey of builders released yesterday indicated that builder confidence in the new-home market in July hit a new low for the third-month in a row. The National Association of...

Builders offering price guarantees to lure buyers

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on May 07

Builders have been heavily discounting prices hoping to lure buyers back to the market. Prices for brand-new construction in some communities are very tempting and even comparable to bank-owned foreclosures,...

One Building, Three Lives

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on January 14

It's become a familiar site in overbuilt markets such as South Florida and Southern California, high-end condo projects converting to rental units. One prominent example 1010 Wilshire. The 17-story...

New home sales--every silver lining has a dark cloud

Posted by: Peter Coy on October 25

They say every silver lining has a dark cloud, and that's certainly true with today's report from the Census Bureau that sales of new single-family homes rose 4.8% in...

New homes sales: down, down, down

Posted by: Dean Foust on March 26

Remember a couple of months ago when homebuilders were citing home sales data as evidence that the housing downturn had bottomed and stabilized? So much for that. The Commerce Dept....

New Home Sales Fall

Posted by: Peter Coy on February 28

The U.S. economy is doing OK overall, but housing is in its own private hell. Still. That was borne out by the Census Bureau's report today that sales of new...

Country Homes

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on February 12

First came Dollywood, the theme park built by Dolly Parton. Then Martha Stewart began designing houses for KB Home. What's next? Brookwood. Ronnie Gilley Properties, a developer and no...

Everything Old Is New Again

Posted by: Peter Coy on January 19

"Everything Old Is New Again" isn't just a song; it's a real-estate sales strategy. When properties sit on the market too long and get stale, some agents yank them briefly,...

The New Chief at KB Home

Posted by: Chris Palmeri on January 17

It's not easy filling someone else's shoes, especially if that someone is long time KB Home chief exec Bruce Karatz. Karatz built a reputation as an innovative marketer, once...

'F' in Economics for Move Inc. Exec

Posted by: Peter Coy on January 11

I give Allan Dalton of Move Inc. an 'F' in economics for comments he made this week at Brad Inman's Real Estate Connect NYC conference. The 'F' is for Dalton's...

New home sales down, down, down

Posted by: Dean Foust on August 24

New home sales fell 21.6% in July from the same month last year. That's the lowest level since February, and below the consensus estimate. Inventories of new homes for sale...

Thinking of Raiding Your IRA for a Downpayment?

Posted by: Peter Coy on July 12

Just a wild guess, but I don't think Carrie Schwab Pomerantz needed to take money out of her IRA in order to cough up a downpayment for her first house....

Sales Pitch: 'The Westernmost Point on the East Coast'

Posted by: Peter Coy on July 06

Folks, history is being made. This may be the first time ever that being on the same longitude as Akron, Ohio, was a key selling point in the real estate...

Less to Sales Rise Than Meets the Eye

Posted by: Peter Coy on May 24

Don't be overly impressed by reports on the Census Bureau report today that sales of new one-family houses in April rose 4.9%, seasonally adjusted, from their level in March. Economist...

New Home Sales Jump, But Beware

Posted by: Peter Coy on April 26

Don't be too impressed by today's Census Bureau report that new home sales in March rose 13.8% from February. First of all, these numbers fluctuate wildly. Sales had fallen 10.9%...

Big Drop in New-Home Sales

Posted by: Peter Coy on March 24

An eye-popping drop in new-home sales announced today by the Census Bureau. Sales fell 10.5% from January to February. That put them 13.4% where they were in February '05. Don't...

Finally...

Posted by: Toddi Gutner on February 28

It’s finally here—statistically speaking--the declining housing market. Though most of us have been blogging about this slowly leaking bubble for the last six to nine months—the cold, hard numbers are...