The headline existing home sales growth slowed with the authors saying “Sales activity likely would have been somewhat stronger if not for the fact that parts of Texas and South Florida – hit by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma – saw temporary, but notable declines”. Our analysis of the unadjusted data strongly disagrees with the headline data.

Analyst Opinion of Existing Home Sales

The rolling averages have been slowing in 2017 – and they slowed again this month. You need to be on drugs (or an economist) to even begin to think sales this month were better than last month.

Econintersect Analysis

  • Unadjusted sales rate of growth decelerated 3.5 % month-over-month, down 4.3 % year-over-year – sales growth rate trend decelerated using the 3 month moving average.
  • Unadjusted price rate of growth decelerated 0.9 % month-over-month, up 3.5 % year-over-year – price growth rate trend decelerated using the 3 month moving average.
  • The homes for sale inventory grew insignificantly this month, remains historically low for Julys, and is down 6.4 % from inventory levels one year ago).

    • NAR reported:

  • Sales up 0.7 % month-over-month, down 1.5 % year-over-year.
  • Prices up 4.2 % year-over-year
  • The market expected annualized sales volumes of 5.100 M to 5.400 M (consensus 5.300 million) vs the 5,39 million reported.

    • The graph below presents unadjusted home sales volumes.

    Here are the headline words from the NAR analysts:

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