New Home Sales up 3.3%

Oil down and stocks up. Good news on the housing front!
New home sales rose 3.3% last month, just another sign the housing market is turning a corner and headed toward recovery. It took a slow down in building to eat up inventory levels of unsold homes. New home sales had reached an 18 year low, prior to their recent climb. As much as this sounds bad, we really needed builders to stop building to get the housing market to recover. They have done so.

Stocks higher after home sales data, lower oil05/27/08 17:29 EDT
By JOE BEL BRUNO
NEW YORK (AP) - Wall Street advanced in uneven trading Tuesday after a drop in oil prices and an unexpected gain in new home sales encouraged investors to put money back into the market.
Stocks picked up momentum late in the session as oil prices drifted below $129 a barrel. This helped ease investor concerns about the effect of soaring energy and food prices on consumers, who account for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity.
With gas prices up sharply from a year ago, many on Wall Street are worried that nervous consumers will stop reaching into their wallets for discretionary purchases. That was confirmed by fresh data from the Conference Board, which said its Consumer Confidence Index dropped for the fifth straight month and is now at its lowest level since October 1992.
Investors were also somewhat reassured after the Commerce Department said sales of new homes rose 3.3 percent in April to a seasonally adjusted rate of 526,000 units. In March, sales had fallen 11 percent to their weakest pace since 1991.
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