August 2024 Residential Sales

And Homebuilder Comments

Figure 1 shows the standard measures. I normally dismiss Figure 1, but, the market is slowly getting back to a normal condition. Maybe someday not too far from today, these measures will be meaningful and useful again.

Figure 1

I’d say that the homes sold metric is somewhat informative now, as a sign of loosening supply constraints. It doesn’t tell us much about demand. Demand is pushed up against a vertical short-term supply curve, so changes in demand aren’t going to affect the number of units sold for a while, except for maybe some temporary changes in inventory if demand moves up enough to trigger bloated inventory under construction, like it did in 2022.

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