MacroScope

U.S.home resales unexpectedly fell in December, but the drop was not large enough to suggest the recovery in the housing sector is running out of steam.

The National Association of Realtors said on Tuesday that existing home sales dropped 1.0 percent last month to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 4.94 million units.

Reuters television’s Conway Gittens interviews Budge Huskey, CEO of Coldwell Banker.

He says despite last month’s pullback he sees a “solid foundation for a continuing  housing recovery in 2013.”

Just as Americans begin to regain some hope that the housing sector might be on the mend, we get another batch of data showing the sector’s not quite there yet.

Groundbreaking on homes fell unexpectedly in March to an annual rate of just 654,000, down from 694,000 in February and well short of the 705,000 Reuters consensus forecast. Some context: permits peaked above 2.2 million in early 2006, at the apex of the housing bubble. On the bright side, permits for future construction rose to their highest level in 3-1/2 years.



In other housing data this week, homebuilder sentiment deteriorated again after posting a pretty decent rebound from the very depressed levels seen in 2011.

Surprise! There’s some life in housing after all. U.S. construction starts and building permits jumped to a 1-1/2 year high in November as demand for rental apartments rose, suggesting a downtrodden housing market may be entering a tentative recovery. But will this be another in a long string of bottom-bounces? Or is it the start of a trend? 

Starts surged 9.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 685,000 units last month, the highest level since April last year and well above the Reuters consensus forecast of 635,000. Stephen Stanley at Pierpoint Securities was reticently enthusiastic:

Could it be? Is the housing sector finally beginning to stir? It is a little premature to declare victory, but the data are starting to point to some stirrings in residential construction activity. To be sure, we should not be entirely surprised. New home inventories are far and away lower than they have been in decades.

The St. Louis Fed had a public forum this week to talk about their research into the ailing U.S. jobs market. Not a feel-good scenario.

The bottom line was something the regional Fed bank’s research director Christopher Waller told Reuters in a recent interview: the last three recessions have brought jobless recoveries and this one is no exception. No one can clearly explain why, except that employers are less likely to hire back workers they’ve fired than in the past, and that with so much of the recent downturn due to the collapse of housing, it’s evident that unemployed construction workers can’t easily find new work in, say, nursing or IT.

At this week’s gathering, Waller and his staff fleshed out their research with a number of interesting take-aways. In no particular order: