Houston's Rate Sheet

Home Sales are down

Home sales are down across the US, but Houstonians don't care. We don't care because as reported last week our home sales are up. It looks like the US housing boom is over. Let's hope we're on the cusp of a Houston housing boom. Here's an excerpt from the AP report:

Sales of new homes fell for the second time in three months in January, providing further evidence that the nation's five-year housing boom is slowing.

The Commerce Department reported Monday that sales of new single-family homes dropped by 5 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 1.233 million units last month.

That was a bigger drop than analysts had been expecting and provided support to the view that the housing market, after setting sales records for five straight years, is slowing under the impact of rising mortgage rates.

The 5 percent January drop in sales followed a revised 3.8 percent increase in December and was the biggest setback since a 7 percent drop in November.

posted by Vincent Biondillo @ 10:51 AM