HIA new home sales are out today and recovered some of the ground lost in February:
New home sales bounced back in March to maintain the modest recovery underway from the record lows reached in 2012, said the Housing Industry Association, the voice of Australia’s home building industry.
The HIA New Home Sales report, a survey of Australia’s largest volume builders, showed that total seasonally adjusted new home sales increased by 4.2 per cent in March 2013, taking sales back to volumes comparable to 12 months ago. In the month of March new detached house sales increased by 3.9 per cent following a 4.0 per cent decline in February. Sales of multi-units rose by 5.6 per cent in March after dropping by 11.0 per cent in February.
That’s some better news than the PMI but take a longer term look at the above chart and you will see that since the rate cut campaign began in late 2011, sales have gone absolutely nowhere. Full release below.
David Llewellyn-Smith is Chief Strategist at the MB Fund and MB Super. David is the founding publisher and editor of MacroBusiness and was the founding publisher and global economy editor of The Diplomat, the Asia Pacific’s leading geo-politics and economics portal.
He is also a former gold trader and economic commentator at The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age, the ABC and Business Spectator. He is the co-author of The Great Crash of 2008 with Ross Garnaut and was the editor of the second Garnaut Climate Change Review.
