For the fourth month in a row, homes sales dropped in September by nearly 6%, to the lowest level of pending sales of existing homes since December of 2012. Naturally, the media want to try to blame the GOP for a four month trend. The LA Times writes that the government shutdown “weighed on sales.” Zero Hedge not only proves that isn’t true, but points out that this is the biggest drop in almost four years:
[P]ending home sales data collapsed in September (and remember this is before the shutdown and was heralded at the time as buyers rushing to buy before the risk of the shutdown slowed acceptances). Affordability, argued by some serial extrapolators as still being ‘relatively’ positive – has drastically weighed on housing at the margin just as we argued previously. This is the first annual drop in 29 months, the biggest drop in 40 months, and the biggest miss against expectations in 40 months. [emphasis original].
Zero Hedge adds: “…in our world September is before October and no one was talking about shutdown’s impact then OR even pricing it in any way.”
The downward trend in existing home sales perfectly mirrors the downward trend in job creation.
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