In The News - August 1, 2009

Sales of new, single-family homes in June reached a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 384,000, according to estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development. June’s sales are an encouraging 11 percent higher than the revised May rate of 346,000, but are still 21.3 percent below June 2008’s estimate of 488,000.

The median sales price for new homes sold in June was $206,200 and the average sales price was $276,900. The seasonally adjusted estimate of new homes for sale at the end of June was 281,000, which represents a supply of 8.8 months at the current sales rate.

Where durable goods are concerned, new orders for manufactured durable goods in June decreased by $4.1 billion (2.5 percent) to $158.6 billion, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. The sobering drop followed two consecutive months of increases, including a favorable 1.3 percent jump in May. Transportation orders were a main factor in June’s drop, according to the bureau. Without them, new orders would have increased 1.1 percent.

The drops in orders were in line with news that the nation’s real gross domestic product — the output of goods and services produced by U.S. labor and property — dropped at an annual rate of 5.5 percent in the first quarter of 2009, according to the of Bureau of Economic Analysis. This followed a fourth-quarter drop in real GDP of 6.3 percent.

The bureau chalked up the Q1 decrease to negative contributions from exports, equipment and software, private inventory investment, nonresidential structures, and residential fixed investment that were partly offset by a positive contribution from personal consumption expenditures.

This week, keep an eye out for news on construction spending (Aug. 3) and factory orders (Aug. 5) from the Census Bureau; auto and truck sales (Aug. 3), as reported by the various manufacturers; personal income (Aug. 4) from the Bureau of Economic Analysis; the average workweek (Aug. 7) from the Bureau of Labor Statistics; and consumer credit (Aug. 7) from the Federal Reserve.