Home sales are weaker than they seem

Home sales are weaker than they seem

Mark Fleming, chief economist at First American, argues that failing to account for the growing number of U.S. households gives a misleading impression of housing market strength. “If we look at existing-home sales as a percentage of the total number of households over time, we see that sales are down to the same levels as the early 1990s, just above 3%, and well below the long-run average of 4.1%,” he said. “If home sales today were tracking at…