On Thursday, the Commerce Department stated that new home sale purchases increased to a higher-than-expected 2.3% in April to the second-highest level in five years as demand helps sustain residential construction, reports Lorraine Woellert for Bloomberg.
“We’re moving in the right direction,” Kevin Cummins, an economist at UBS Securities LLC, said in the Bloomberg article. “It’s pretty much consistent with an improvement we’ve seen in the labor market and income.”
Homebuilder stocks and ETFs have been a fairly reliable leading indicator over the years, topping out before housing bust and bouncing back before the housing recovery.
SPDR S&P Homebuilders
For more information on the housing market, visit our homebuilders category.
Max Chen contributed to this article.