U.S. new home sales come below expectations in June, housing sector to rebound modestly and steadily

U.S. new home sales came in below expectations in June. New home sales came in at 610k, as compared with consensus forecast of 615k. The miss in forecast was partially because of a downward revision to earlier data, with net revisions since January reaching -27k.

Region wise, weakness was seen mainly in the South where sales dropped 21k. In the West and Midwest, sales rose on the month, while the Northeast saw sales continuing to be flat. In other details, months’ supply rose a bit to 5.4 as the number of homes available for sale rose.

Overall, the report released today implies that there was a little more weakness in this segment of the housing market than was anticipated earlier. However, a modest and steady rebound in the housing sector is expected in this year, noted Barclays in a research report.

The weaker than expected report, along with downward revisions to earlier months’ sales and home prices data, suggests lower single-family construction and brokers’ commissions that had been pencilled earlier. Thus, Barclays has revised down its Q2 GDP tracking estimate by one-tenth, to 2.4 percent quarter-on-quarter.

At 16:00 GMT the FxWirePro's Hourly Strength Index of US Dollar was neutral at 18.7335. For more details on FxWirePro's Currency Strength Index, visit http://www.fxwirepro.com/currencyindex

FxWirePro launches Absolute Return Managed Program. For more details, visit http://www.fxwirepro.com/invest