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Builders Woo to buy new.. 19% year-over-year from 2012
New may be the new new in homes. This New York Times piece by Stuart Elliott focuses on creative aimed to grab prospective home buyers by the collar and get them into new home models, where the communities themselves will do the talking. Still, not seasonally adjusted, according to the Census Bureau, about 63 thousand new homes sold in the first two months of 2013, an increase of about 19% year-over-year from 2012. Historically, a normal ratio of resales to new homes is about 6 to one, but after peaking at 17 to one in 2010 and 2011, resales still outsell new homes by about 12 to one. Hanley Wood chief economist Jonathan Smoke has written here, and here about the campaign from GSD&M in Austin. Hanley Wood’s resident contrarian Frank Anton muses here that although new homes may have a higher price take on first glimpse, the cost of operating an existing home turns out to be more in the end. So new rules.