On the heels of the worst year ever for existing home sales, new home sales were expected to rebound 10.0% MoM in December after plunging back to reality in November (-12.2%) as mortgage rates tumbled.
New home sales disappointed in December, rising just 8% MoM (vs 10% exp) but that is still the biggest MoM jump since last December.
Source: Bloomberg
Of course, having pointed out the dramatic series of downward revisions to this data series this year, November's 12.2% plunge was revised up to a 8.0% drop
Source: Bloomberg
On a SAAR basis, new home sales ended at 664k (pre-COVID-lockdown levels), completely decoupled from existing home sales...
Source: Bloomberg
This left new home sales up 4.4% YoY...
Source: Bloomberg
The median new home price fell 13.8% YoY to $413,200
Source: Bloomberg
Trouble is, even as mortgage rates have plunged recently, applications for home purchases have only rebounded modestly...
Source: Bloomberg
And while mortgage rates have declined (rapidly), they remain massively high relative to the effective mortgage rate for all Americans. That difference is the 'subsidy' that homebuilders have to fill to enable buyers - and it's still yuuuge!
Source: Bloomberg
Of course, investors don't care about actual fundamentals, rates are down so 'buy buy buy' the builders...
Source: Bloomberg
Finally, we note that supply shrank from 8.8 months to 8.2 months in December - so don't expect new home prices to keep falling (they'll be rising like the supply-constrained existing homes market)...
...and don't expect The Fed cuts to prompt an excess-supply-driven decline in prices - it's start your engines time on the next bubble.
