Written by Steven Hansen
The headlines for existing home sales say “existing sales kicked off 2016 on solid footing, rising slightly to the strongest pace since July 2015“. Our analysis of the unadjusted data shows that home sales did improve, and the rolling averages improved.
Econintersect Analysis:
- Unadjusted sales rate of growth accelerated 1.9 % month-over-month, up 7.5% year-over-year – sales growth rate trend improved using the 3 month moving average.
- Unadjusted price rate of growth accelerated 0.3 % month-over-month, up 4.7 % year-over-year – price growth rate trend is modestly improved using the 3 month moving average.
- The homes for sale inventory marginally grew this month, but remains historically low for Januarys, and is down 2.2 % from inventory levels one year ago).
- Sales up 0.4 % month-over-month, up 11.0 % year-over-year.
- Prices up 8.2 % year-over-year
- The market expected annualized sales volumes of 5.130 to 5.555 million (consensus 5.32 million) vs the 5.47 million reported.
Unadjusted Year-over-Year Change in Existing Home Sales Volumes (blue line) – 3 Month Rolling Average (red line)
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The graph below presents unadjusted home sales volumes.
Unadjusted Monthly Home Sales Volumes
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Here are the headline words from the NAR analysts:
Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist, says existing sales kicked off 2016 on solid footing, rising slightly to the strongest pace since July 2015 (5.48 million). “The housing market has shown promising resilience in recent months, but home prices are still rising too fast because of ongoing supply constraints,” he said. “Despite the global economic slowdown, the housing sector continues to recover and will likely help the U.S. economy avoid a recession.”
“The spring buying season is right around the corner and current supply levels aren’t even close to what’s needed to accommodate the subsequent growth in housing demand,” says Yun. “Home prices ascending near or above double-digit appreciation aren’t healthy – especially considering the fact that household income and wages are barely rising.”
With homebuyers facing a tough market this spring, NAR President Tom Salomone said Realtors® overwhelmingly applauded the recent U.S. House of Representatives passage of H.R. 3700, the “Housing Opportunity Through Modernization Act.”
“This legislation contains a number of initiatives that put homeownership in reach for more families, including several reforms to current Federal Housing Administration restrictions on condominium financing. Now that the House has overwhelmingly voted in support of the bill, we look forward to working with our industry partners to advance it through the Senate.”
Comparison of Home Price Indices – Case-Shiller 3 Month Average (blue line, left axis), CoreLogic (green lin.
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To remove the seasonality in home prices, here is a year-over-year graph which demonstrates a general improvement in home price rate of growth since mid-2012.
Comparison of Home Price Indices on a Year-over-Year Basis – Case-Shiller 3 Month Average (blue bars), CoreLogic (yellow bars) and National Association of Realtors three month average (red bars)
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Econintersect does a more complete analysis of home prices with the Case-Shiller analysis. The graphs above on prices use a three month rolling average of the NAR data, and show a 4.4 % year-over-year gain.
Homes today are still relatively affordable according to the NAR’s Housing Affordability Index.
Unadjusted Home Affordability Index
This affordability index measures the degree to which a typical family can afford the monthly mortgage payments on a typical home.
Value of 100 means that a family with the median income has exactly enough income to qualify for a mortgage on a median-priced home. An index above 100 signifies that family earning the median income has more than enough income to qualify for a mortgage loan on a median-priced home, assuming a 20 percent down payment. For example, a composite housing affordability index (COMPHAI) of 120.0 means a family earning the median family income has 120% of the income necessary to qualify for a conventional loan covering 80 percent of a median-priced existing single-family home. An increase in the COMPHAI then shows that this family is more able to afford the median priced home.
The home price situation according to the NAR:
The median existing-home price for all housing types in January was $213,800, up 8.2 percent from January 2015 ($197,600). Last month’s price increase was the largest since April 2015 (8.5 percent) and marks the 47th consecutive month of year-over-year gains.
According to the NAR, all-cash sales accounted for 24 % of sales this month.
The share of first-time buyers remained at 32 percent in January for the second consecutive month and is up from 28 percent a year ago. First-time buyers in all of 2015 represented an average of 30 percent, up from 29 percent in both 2014 and 2013.
All-cash sales were 26 percent of transactions in January (24 percent in December 2015) and are down from 27 percent a year ago. Individual investors, who account for many cash sales, purchased 17 percent of homes in January (15 percent in December 2015), matching the highest share since last January. Sixty-seven percent of investors paid cash in January.
Unadjusted Inventories are below the levels of one year ago.
Total housing inventory at the end of January increased 3.4 percent to 1.82 million existing homes available for sale, but is still 2.2 percent lower than a year ago (1.86 million). Unsold inventory is at a 4.0-month supply at the current sales pace, up slightly from 3.9 months in December 2015.
Unadjusted Total Housing Inventory
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Caveats on Use of NAR Existing Home Sales Data
The National Association of Realtors (NAR) is a trade organization. Their analysis tends to understate the bad, and overstate the good. However, the raw (and unadjusted) data is released which allows a complete unbiased analysis. Econintersect analyzes only using the raw data. Also note the National Association of Realtors (NAR) new methodology now has moderate back revision to the data – so it is best to look at trends, and not get too excited about each month’s release.
The NAR re-benchmarked their data in their November 2011 existing home sales data release reducing their recent reported home sales volumes by an average of 15%. The NAR stated benchmarking will be an annual process, and the 2010 data will need to be benchmarked again next year.
Also released today were periodic benchmark revisions with downward adjustments to sales and inventory data since 2007, led by a decline in for-sale-by-owners. Although rebenchmarking resulted in lower adjustments to several years of home sales data, the month-to-month characterization of market conditions did not change. There are no changes to home prices or month’s supply.
Existing home sales is one area the government does not report data – and it is easy to assume that an organization whose purpose is to paint the housing industry in a good light would inflate their data. However, Econintersect is assuming in its analysis that the NAR numbers are correct.
The NAR’s home price data has been questioned by others also. However, Econintersectanalysis shows a very good home price correlation to Case-Shiller, CoreLogic’s HPI, and LPS, especially when three-month moving averages are used – as shown in the graph earlier in this article.
Econintersect determines the month-over-month change by subtracting the current month’s year-over-year change from the previous month’s year-over-year change. This is the best of the bad options available to determine month-over-month trends – as the preferred methodology would be to use multi-year data (but the New Normal effects and the Great Recession distort historical data).
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