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What's New
03/19/2010 11:51
What's New
| U.S. existing home sales data for February are due on March 23rd from the National Association of Realtors with new home sales data also for February released the following day from the Census Bureau. Both have fallen heavily in the last two months; existing home sales are down 22% to 5.05m while new home sales are down by 15% to 309,000. This sharp reversal is in large part the result of two factors. First, the new homebuyer $8,000 tax credit was expected to expire in November, which in the run-up to this period would have given potential owners an incentive to bring forward their home purchases. Second, the snow brought large parts of the USA to a standstill during January. The extreme weather conditions experienced will not have been adequately reflected in the seasonal adjustments that are normally applied to the monthly data. Therefore, the recent data is likely to have overstated the underlying market weakness. Read the full RICS Global Real Estate Weekly Comment here. About RICS & RICS Americas RICS (Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors), with headquarters in London, is the leading organization of its kind in the world for more than 100,000 professionals in property, land, construction and related environmental issues. RICS Americas, based in New York and covering North, Central and South America and the Caribbean, has more than 2,000 members in commercial and residential development, construction and project management, brokerage, planning and finance, valuation and fine arts appraisal. For further information visit www.ricsamericas.org or e-mail ricsamericas@rics.org. |