New home sales rise to 7-year high as demand buoys builders
Sales of new homes are up 10% in the second quarter compared with the first as demand stays hot
New home sales jumped in June as sales data from prior months were revised upward, further signaling sturdy demand in the housing market.
June sales rose 3.5% to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 592,000, the Commerce Department said Tuesday. That was the strongest since February 2008, beating the 560,000 forecast set by economists surveyed by MarketWatch.
The median price jumped to $306,700 in June, 6% higher than a year ago. Supply retreated to 4.9 months’ worth of homes at the current sales pace.
The regional breakdown was mixed. Sales dipped fractionally in the Northeast and South. But they surged by more than 10% in both the West and in the Midwest, where sales haven’t run so hot since November 2007.
Revisions to March, April and May data raised those months’ sales tallies by a net 22,000. Many economists prefer to look at multiple-month averages for new home sales data, which is often volatile and heavily revised. The average pace for the second quarter, 576,000, is 10% higher than the 524,000 for the first three months of the year.
Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump both called for the reinstatement of Glass-Steagall, a 1933 law that separated investment and commercial banks.
The Power Elite has also purposefully confused bullying with strength. Bullying fails because the bullied hate the bully with every fiber of their being. True strength flows from opt-in, mutually beneficial alliances that people and nations join out of self-interest. Such opt-in relationships can only endure if telling the truth is the core principle, for truth is the foundation of trust, and trust is the foundation of durable alliances and cooperative networks.
This was the moment when Perry concluded that there could be no acceptable defense against a mass nuclear attack, an opinion from which he has never deviated. Many political leaders, including several presidents, have disagreed with Perry and have sponsored various types of anti-missile defense systems, the latest being the ballistic missile defense system now being installed in Eastern Europe.
Russian Economy Recovering Slowly
With oil holding relatively stable, there are few restrictions on meeting inflationary goals by the end of next year, a Russian finance minister said. “Inflation [in 2016] will be in the range of between 5.5 percent and 6 percent,” Deputy Finance Minister Maxim Oreshkin said Monday. “This is how it is going now.” Crude oil prices moved from above $100 per barrel in 2014 to below $30 per barrel in early 2016 because the global economy was too slow to take on the excess supply on the market. That price collapse hurt economies like Russia that depend in part on oil for revenue. With oil prices holding relatively stable at around $45 per barrel since May, the Central Bank of Russia said […]
