new home sales and cancelations / oder wie schlecht kann ne statistik sein.....

einmal mehr ein beispiel wie löchrig die vorgelegten statistiken sind. dieser fall hier ist besonders krass und zeigt somit nicht das ganze bild der eh schon düsteren wirklichkeit
stellt euch die letzten daten http://immobilienblasen.blogspot.com/2006/09/new-home-sales-down-174-yy.html mal unter berücksichtigung der unten genannten fakten vor. dann werden aus schlechten daten absolute horrorzahlen.

passend dazu und zum schmunzeln
http://immobilienblasen.blogspot.com/2006/10/statz-rappers-explains-some-us_02.html



Think Housing's Stabilized? See Cancellations: Caroline Baum
http://tinyurl.com/mtqbn

summary:

cancellations are rising, and they aren't being captured in the aggregate statistics because of the way the survey is designed. Hence, sales are being overstated and inventories understated.

``Once a sales contract is signed, there's no way of recording the cancellation or putting the home back in inventory,'' says Dave Seiders, chief economist at the National Association of Homebuilders in Washington. ``Builders keep track of gross and net sales; we don't have a net sales number from Commerce.''

The Census Bureau, which is one of the Commerce Department's statistical agencies, counts an initial new home sale: Sales go up and the ``for sale'' inventory is reduced. If the sale is canceled, it isn't reflected in revisions to previous months. What happens? When the home is ``resold,'' statisticians ignore that transaction.

``We don't double count

When the cancellation rate is changing -- in either direction -- it can distort both sales and inventories.

We know from big builders that cancellation rates are rising. Seiders says the rate ``has roughly doubled over the last year'' and is ``more serious at the big companies.''

Just this week, Lennar Corp., the No. 3 U.S. homebuilder, said its cancellation rate was running at more than 30 percent. Net new orders fell 5 percent in the quarter ended Aug. 31.
Cancellation rates rose to 29 percent in the April-June quarter at D.R. Horton Inc., the second-largest homebuilder, and deteriorated further in July, according to the company. That compares with an historical average rate of 16-20 percent.

The effect of higher cancellations is ``to overstate the overall level of sales and understate the level of inventories,'' Carson says. The opposite is true at the bottom of the economic cycle, when sales pick up and the resold homes aren't registered as a sale or removed from the ``for sale'' pile.

If it turns out that reported new home sales are overstating the level of demand to any significant degree, the needed correction could be even more severe.

dazu die meinung von calculated risk
http://calculatedrisk.blogspot.com/2006/09/new-home-sales-and-cancellations.html

This is the clearest discussion I've seen about how the Census Bureau accounts for cancellations.

1) When a house is sold, the Census Bureau includes the sale and reduces inventory by one.

2) If the house is cancelled, the Census Bureau does nothing. Sales are not reduced; inventory is not increased.

3) When the same house is resold, the Census Bureau does nothing. It is not included in Sales.

So if 100K houses have been cancelled and not resold, inventory is actually 100K higher than reported by the Census Bureau. Because of the recent high cancellations rates, this means that new home sales are probably much lower than reported by the Census Bureau - and inventories are significantly higher

jan-martin