Evidence of a slowing US housing market continues to build. Reuters reports:
Sales of existing U.S. homes fell 1.7 percent in November as inventories climbed, indicating a rally in the U.S. housing market has begun to wane, a trade group said on Thursday...
November's existing-home sales at a 6.97 million unit annual rate compared with a 7.09 million unit pace in October and marked the first time the sales pace has dipped below 7 million units since March, the [National Association of] Realtors said...
Existing homes available for sale in November jumped 1.2 percent to 2.903 million -- the biggest supply since April 1986, when inventories hit 3.04 million units, the group said.
November's inventory level equates to 5 months' supply of homes for sale at the current sales pace -- the highest level since June 2003...
The national median existing-home price in November was $215,000, up 13.2 percent from a year ago.
Other economic news in the Reuters report shows that the overall US economy probably remains on a relatively firm footing.
The National Association of Purchasing Management-Chicago business index... fell slightly in December to 61.5 from 61.7 in November...
The Labor Department said initial claims for state unemployment insurance benefits rose to 322,000 last week from an upwardly revised 319,000 in the prior week... The closely watched four-week moving average of new claims...edged up to 325,000 in the week ended December 24 from 324,750...
The Conference Board said its gauge of help-wanted ad volume in the United States climbed to 39 last month, in line with analyst forecasts and compared with 38 in October.
While the US housing market is showing signs of peaking, the UK housing market continues to show signs of recovery even though overall economic conditions remain relatively weak. Yesterday, the British Bankers' Association released data on mortgage lending and consumer credit, and quoted David Dooks, its director of statistics, as saying:
Gross lending on mortgages reached a very high level in November confirming the recovery in the housing market after a relatively weaker early part of the year. Approvals, particularly for house purchase, continued to be strong with little evidence of the normal seasonal slowdown.
By contrast consumer credit was very weak with little sign that the slight improvement in retail sales was feeding through to lending.
And a measure of consumer sentiment corroborates the data on consumer credit. From Reuters:
Consultancy GfK NOP said its barometer of consumer sentiment fell to -9 in December after a reading of -8 in November. That was the lowest point since March 2003 and confounded analysts' predictions of a rise to -6.
But as shown by the Chicago manufacturing index and recent industrial production numbers from Asia, manufacturing has been performing well worldwide, not least in Japan.
The NTC Research/Nomura/JMMA Purchasing Managers Index...stood at a seasonally adjusted 55.7, the highest reading since December 2003 and up from 55.3 in November...
The new orders index...was 58.8 -- a 23-month high and up from 57.8 in November...
The input prices index came in at 62.8 versus 63.2. At the other end of the production line, the output prices index edged down to 49.3 from 49.4.
No comments:
Post a Comment