Last month’s new home sales were substantially lower than economists had been expecting. - WSJ
U.S. sales of new homes last month registered the biggest drop in more than two years. The Commerce Department said Tuesday that new-home sales skidded 11.4 percent in April to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 569,000. It was the biggest monthly drop since March 2015. Economists had expected a more modest retreat from March sales of 642,000, which were the highest since October 2007. Sales in April were still up 0.5 percent from a year earlier. Economists were inclined to view the April reading as a one-month blip. Ian Shepherdson, chief economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, called last month's drop "a correction from the March cycle high, not a warning sign ... We expect sales to rebound somewhat in May, and to return to the March high, at least, over the next few months." - From the AP