Let me start out my look at the latest August new home sales report with my typical housing mantra:
- Interest rates lead sales
- Sales lead prices
- Prices lead inventory
We saw all of that in Thursday morning's report.
First, the trend of rising single-family sales continues, and the three-month average of this very volatile series (blue), shown in comparison with single-family housing permits, was the highest since late 2007:
Note, by the way, that new single-family home sales have a tendency to lead every other metric, including permits - but they are much more volatile