by Lee Adler
Wall Street Examiner
“Pace of U.S. New Home Sales Slows in May” was the Wall Street Journal’s headline on the Census Bureau’s report released last week. But the body of the article had an entirely different tone, exemplified by “Broadly, other data show the housing market as a bright spot in an otherwise choppy economy.” Apparently everything is just peachy in the US housing market. We took a big picture look at that assumption last week and found it wanting.
The story gets even less positive when we take a deeper dive into the Census Bureau’s new home sales data. The bottom line is that the new home construction industry has seen no growth beyond the historical migratory pattern of US retirees moving toward warmer climes, and even that has been less than robust. Another trend that sticks out is the one toward the housing industry increasingly walking away from serving middle income households and below.