The inflated U.S. housing market posted the latest house prices data of 180.27 (SPCS10) published at the end of December 2013 for October 2013 — which put the U.S. housing market momentum at a high of 13.5 percent per annum. But, expansion in the housing sector (and manufacturing and autos) showed signs of slowing. These trends carried over into the 2014 data. Contracts involving sales of new and existing homes have not been as encouraging. Bad weather across the nation certainly has not helped. The unseasonably cold winter slowed down sales in the housing market, which is slated to rebound during March.
January 2014 shows that the rate of housing sales increased at the slowest rate in the last 30 months on a year over year basis. Sales of new and existing homes in January 2014 increased 1.1 percent over the rate of sales in January 2013. The annual rate of new and existing home sales for January 2014 was 6.043 million units — up slightly from 5.976 million units that were sold in January 2013. (Source: The REAL Trends Housing Market Report)
Housing unit sales in January 2014 increased 4.8 percent in the Northeast, which was the strongest showing in the country. The South was the next highest region showing an increase of 4.1 percent. In the Midwest region results were down 1.3 percent while the West slipped down 3.7 percent.
The good news is that the average price of homes sold increased by 13.3 percent in January 2014 compared to January 2013 on the strongest showings in the last year. While the Western region showed the best results with the average price of homes sold increasing 18.7 percent, the Northeast region came in at about 14.1 percent, the Midwest region at 9.9 percent and the South finished with a price increase at 9.4 percent.
The February Labor Department report concerning the state of the U.S. economy added 181,000 jobs in January, 2014, which was up from the 74,000 figure tallied in December of 2013. Growing at 3.2 percent in the fourth quarter of 2013, our economy reflects the fact that not only did consumer spending accelerate, but growth was supported more broadly by overall business improvements in exports and investment.
Also up are sales of house plans online, as many people have been planning real estate sales, property acquisitions for building homes after the bad winter weather clears up, according to websites like www.theplancollection.com. Plus more and more consumers are feeling confident with this concept — finding hundreds of thousands of house plans available in all styles from modern to Victorian style house plans.
 published at the end of December 2013 for October 2013 -- which put the U.S. housing market momentum at a high of 13.5 percent per annum. But, expansion in the housing sector (and manufacturing and autos) showed signs of slowing. These trends carried over into the 2014 data. Contracts involving sales of new and existing homes have not been as encouraging. Bad weather across the nation certainly has not helped. The unseasonably cold winter slowed down sales in the housing market, which is slated to rebound during March.){kind=link}