One of the reasons that housing data has been weak this year is that long-term interest rates rose in the middle of last year and created a headwind for home-buyers. As time has gone on, though, interest rates have leveled off and now we’re starting to anniversary last year’s interest-rate spike.
Housing activity started to decline with the spike, so the good news about being a year removed from the initial increase is that housing comps may start to get a little easier from here. New-home sales, for instance, fell to 367k units (seasonally adjusted annualized) in July of last year from 459k in June of 2013. In April 2014 new homes sales were 433k, which is still down from June 2013 levels, but would be an 18% rise over the July levels.
Excitement Builds
The y/y comp game is a little absurd, because it’s just a function of arithmetic between two points in time. Still, you can bet that if July housing numbers (released in August) show an 18% increase in activity, there are people who are going to get excited.
