11 Consecutive Months Of Declining Home Sales, Where New Construction Stands, & Wiki Is MUCH Bigger Than You Think It Is | (1.23.23)
“Give me six hours to chop down a tree and I will spend the first four sharpening the axe." – Abraham Lincoln
What You Need To Know Today:
• The National Association of Realtors (NAR) released updated existing home sales figures for the month of December 2022 — which measure the annualized number of residential buildings (single-family homes) sold during the previous month, excluding new construction. According to the report, existing home sales declined month-over-month by 1.5% coming in at 4.02M, but did beat the pre-release market expectation of 3.95M.1 This is the eleventh consecutive month of decline for this figure.
TL;DR — Existing home sales resume their retreat, but pre-report market forecasts continue to be more pessimistic than the market activity reality.
• Despite total housing starts declining 3.0% in 2022 when compared to 2021, housing completions were up year-over-year according to the U.S. Census Bureau.2 Further, even though there were significant construction delays in 2022, there were still 1.392M completions (excluding manufactured homes) up from 1.341M in 2021 —The most since 2007. The below graph from
provides an excellent illustration of this and Bill McBride also provides some valuable insight regarding 2023 in his post.TL;DR — Despite complications with construction (largely supply chain and labor issues), housing completions are on the rise, which is desperately needed to try to meet market demand / offset the home supply shortage.
• The Conference Board Inc. (CB) published an updated reading for its Leading Economic Index, which came in down (-1.0%) for the month of December 2022 — below the pre-report market expectation of (-0.7%).3 This index was created to try and predict the overall direction of the U.S. economy through the combination of 10 major economic indicators related to employment, consumer confidence, housing, equity market performance, credit trends, interest rates, and new order data for institutions. Right now, the index continues to indicate recession for the United States...
TL;DR — When combined, current macroeconomic indicators paint a bleak picture…
Chart Of The Day:
The 22-year-old internet super-giant, Wikipedia is still growing in popularity. One of the craziest parts is that the bulk of the information is provided by unpaid “Wikipedians” who contribute millions of entries/edits across the platform which is now published in 329 languages. Talk about being in it for the love of the game! For context as to how many clicks Wikipedia is getting if you combine website traffic for the four biggest “news” companies in the United States; The New York Times, CNN, Fox News, and MSN, the total traffic (1.6 billion) is still less than 1/5th of what the English-language Wikipedia platform is receiving. That does not include the other 328 languages!4
Wikipedia Still Gets Tens Of Billions Of Hits Every Single Month5
TL;DR — Wikipedia is bigger than you think. Like, WAY bigger.
Source: National Association of Realtors — Existing Home Sales Report.
Source: U.S. Census Bureau — Monthly Residential New Construction, December 2022.
Source: The Conference Board — US LEADING INDICATORS.
Source: Chartr — New Year, New Wiki.
Source: Chartr — New Year, New Wiki.