By: New_Deal_democrat
Back in December, I wrote a post here at XE.oom saying that "Interest rates will negatively impact US housing in 2014."
http://community.xe.com/forum/xe-market-analysis/rising-interest-rates-will-negatively-impact-us-housing-2014
While building permits, the specific metric I cited in my post, have not turned negative YoY at all in the first three months of 2014, every other US housing metric is now significantly negative.
Housing starts are -59,000 YoY and -150,000 from their November 2013 peak.
New home sales are also -59,000 YoY and -86,000 from their peak in January of this year.
Existing home sales are -370,000 YoY and -790,000 from their peak in July 2014.
This morning we had the worst new home sales report since October 2012.
So let's take a look at both existing and new home sales for the US.
Existing home sales are less important for the economy, but constitute about 90% of the total market.
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