New Home Sales surge in August

Wells Fargo Research Team Wells Fargo

Summary

More noise than signal

New home sales surprised to the upside and jumped 20.5% during August. The surge reflects slightly lower mortgage rates and an increase in builders offering buyer incentives.

Take the gain with a huge grain of salt. New home sales are prone to heavy revisions. A flat-ish trend in sales, similar to what has been evident all year, seems more likely.

The macro implication is inventories remain elevated relative to sales, which implies a reduced pace of single-family construction moving forward. This means residential investment should continue to drag on overall real GDP growth for the next few quarters.

New home sales jump in August

New home sales jumped sharply in August. The 20.5% gain marks the largest monthly increase since August 2022. New home sales are highly volatile and prone to heavy revisions. The eye-brow raising jump in sales that was well ahead of consensus expectations makes us suspect a downward revision may be forthcoming.

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Wells Fargo Research Team

Wells Fargo

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