CR,
this is a jawdropping report but .........
there is only one very strong point, which I really do not understand. That is the NOT seasonally adjusted Oct number at 111,000.
The most bogus number is the headline number - 1.424 million.
Here is why:
This is a seasonally adjusted number.
We have two months left for 2005.
Year to date NOT seasonally adjusted sales is 1,115,000.
Therefore, for the 2005 sales to meet this headline seasonally adjusted projection of 1,424,000 units, Nov and Dec 2005 would have to sell 309,000 units. (1,424,000 minus 1,115,000)
That is 154,500 per month.
To put that into perspective, on a NOT seasonally adjusted basis, May was the highest month in 2005 with 120,000 units sold. Nov 2004 was 84,000, Dec 2004 was 83,000.
It appears that I am not the only one who saw this discrepancy. After an initial jump, all the homebuilders are settling down.
census.gov |
