New home sales stay near the 50-year low
Today, the U.S. Census Department released its monthly New Residential Home Sales Report for October showing continued weakness with sales declining 8.1% since September to 283K annualized units, very near the lowest level on record.
On a year-over-year basis, new single family home sales plunged a whopping 28.5% while the monthly supply increased 17.8% to 8.6 months.
These results provide even more evidence that the government's housing tax scam policy was ultimately a complete and total failure accomplishing nothing but creating a temporary distortion of the underlying "organic" housing trends.
With numbers this weak, it could even be argued that the government's tax gimmick ultimately destabilized the nation's home markets by injecting a substantial amount of uncertainty, sponsoring feeble home buyers and preventing the natural market clearing mechanism from playing out.
The following charts show the extent of sales decline (click for full-larger version)
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