Author: kkosman

More data delayed by the US government furlough at the end of last year is trickling in; this week US home sales and house price for December and full-year 2018. Despite a period of weakness during autumn 2018, new home sales in the US ended 2018 up +1.5% compared to the total for 2017. Contracts…

The supply of homes for sale in the US for February 2019 showed a five consecutive months’ rise, while January signed contracts jumping a wider-than-expected +4.6% month to month, according to the National Association of Realtors. US Housing Inventory: February 2019 The supply of homes for sale is finally rising, but fewer buyers are able…

After a sleepy end to 2018, the manufacture, sale, and consumption of North American dimension softwood lumber in 2019 to date has bobbled to relative normalcy. In the type of data that analysts like Madison’s loves, the wholesaler (producer or secondary supplier) price of benchmark framing softwood lumber commodity Western Spruce-Pine-Fir KD 2×4 #2&Btr last…

The trend of this data provides a good indicator, but it is not as reliable for each data point, said Bill McBride Thursday in his fabulous Calculated Risk. Madison’s regularly features US Price-to-Rent ratio insight from Calculated Risk, as that can be a good forward indicator — if interpreted carefully. The US Residential Vacancies and…

More data out this week, this time for US house prices and sales, helps provide clarity to the housing starts data also just released (details here: https://madisonsreport.com/2019/02/27/us-housing-starts-dec-and-full-year-2018/). US housing prices recorded their slowest growth in four years during 2018, signalling that this year may be a trying time for the real estate industry. However, as…