Another rate of change slow-down in US Existing Home Sales?
Yup.
The breakdown is as follows:
Decent print but no real surprises. Growth in Existing Home Sales slowed to +3.0% YoY in June but the main callout was that the share of sales to 1st-time buyers rose to 33%, marking the highest percentage since July 2012 as unit sales increased to the highest level of the cycle at 1.84M.
The trend here is important because any next leg higher in transaction volumes will require resurgent 1st-time and entry level buyer demand. The past 3 years have been littered with single-month breakout headfakes and false optimism so we’re interested to see if the strength can confirm next month.
The more important housing release will be next week’s Pending Home Sales data for June – which will give us the lead read on sales in the existing market for July.
Bottom Line: You'll be reading about the Housing slowdown in newspapers, in 3 months.
