U.S. Existing Home Sales Data - ADJUSTED!
Adjusting Existing Home Sales for actual prices
by w0nk0
EDIT - For some weird reason, the images seem to break for some readers. In that case, refer to this:
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$AIG and others recently caught huge bids on the notion that existing home sales data out of the NAR was very encouraging (good source: http://www.usinspect.com/blog/existing-home-sales-for-june). It was widely repeated that home sales were UP over a one year period for the first time in July 2009.
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I had an inkling that these oh so encouraging numbers might be very skewed by the fact that the actual home VALUES have imploded over the same period. Today I have taken the time to compile the NAR data into a spreadsheet that would give me the actual DOLLAR VALUE of existing homes sold, which I find to be a way more insightful number. As you can see from the charts attached, the unit sales were of course up when comparing July 2009 to July 2008, but in dollar terms, sales are still down a whopping eleven percent. Based on these numbers, sales havent reached the level of July 2008, but October 2008. What looks like a reversal of course in the "units sold" chart could just as well be a bounce in an ongoing downtrend in the $$ based chart.
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(Data is monthly data scaled up to an annualizied projection based on single month data points. Data source: National Association of Realtors)
If you've been seeing an end of the housing slump in the widely available data - you'd better look beyond the optimistic numbers that all the talking heads like to repeat..
