Brace yourself

The latest numbers on new home sales come out from NAHB tomorrow, and NAR releases its report on existing home sales for July on Monday. The Wall Street Journal's Real Time Economics blog has a roundup of pessimistic notes by market analysts.

Here's an excerpt from analyst at BNP Paribas Fixed Income:

"Friday's data on new home sales are clearly ‘pre-turmoil’ but should nonetheless be shockingly weak, underlining that the housing market was continuing to meltdown even before the credit crunch of recent weeks. … Add in the fact that the new home sales data (and the inventory data) are not adjusted for cancellations which are still running at a 30-40% rate according to some of the major homebuilders then the ‘true’ new home sales number is far lower than the data being reported each month. And given spiking mortgage rates and increased uncertainty, cancellation rates appear to be rising once again.”

All rights reserved. This content may not be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, in part or in whole, without written permission of Inman News. Use of this content without permission is a violation of federal copyright law.