Posted To: Mortgage Rate Watch
This week’s New Home Sales report (for the month of March) stole the show, coming in over 1 million for the first time since 2006. But although sales are up 66% year-over-year, prices have fallen in recent months and are now basically unchanged from last year. What’s up with that? Making this all the more puzzling (at first glance, anyway) is the fact that home price appreciation has been breaking records according to some reports. Here’s the widely-followed FHFA House Price Index: FHFA’s data is for REPEAT sales and refinances. That means it doesn’t capture new home prices at the time of construction despite thoroughly tracking home prices in general. There’s a separate home sales report for “existing” sales, and it does a better job tracking with FHFA’s home price trends. Fortunately, that…(read more)