St. Louis Fed data through Dec. 2012 shows no housing recovery

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1/25/13, "The "Undisputed Housing Recovery" Is Unmissable On This New Home Sales Chart," Zero Hedge

"We could bore readers with the just announced New Homes Sales data from the Census Bureau, which put a somewhat largish dent in the "undisputed" housing recovery fairytale taking place in America (perhaps in the Hamptons, and triplexes in Manhattan where the NAR continues to launder Chinese and Russian oligarch money) such as:

• December new homes sales, seasonally adjusted annualized, dropped from an upward revised 398K (was 377K) to 369K on expectations of a 385K print;
• That this was the biggest M/M drop since February 2011;
• That months supply rose from 4.5 to 4.9, the highest since January 2012;
• That on an unadjusted, actual basis, a tiny 26K houses were actually sold in December, compared to 24K last December, of which just 2K in the Northeast;
• That a whopping 1,000 houses were sold in the $750,000 and over category
• That houses for sale rose to 150K, the highest since December of 2011
• That the punditry already spun this as being due to lack of clarity over the Fiscal Cliff and tax hikes, when in reality with expectations of higher taxes, consumers would have spent more money on hard assets in December, but why not regurgitate generic stupidity...

Or we could just show this chart of the non-seasonally adjusted, unannualized New Home Sales in the past decade, and ask: just where is this recovery everyone keeps on talking about?
 

Source: St. Louis Fed

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