Daniel Demeo
Dr. Dilorenzo
Ground Floor
1 April 2014
Wall Street Journal: Economics
Examination of The Article, “New-Home Sales Fell 3.3% in February" The article, “New-Home Sales Fell 3.3% in February”, authored by, Jonathan House, dis-cusses the nation’s faltering housing market, only augmented by recent severe weather. A recent studied proved that current sales of newly-built houses decreased a substantial 3.3% to a season-ally adjusted 440,000, compared to a month earlier.This trending downward slope has been in effect for the last few months. While it is true that sales of housing increased over the last year, it has been rather sporadic. In fact, due to increasing mortgage rates and housing prices, it has been very inconsistent.Along with decreasing sales of newly-built homes, existing home sales have suffered too. Existing home sales decreased this past February, which has been a reoccurring theme the past two months. According to Mr. House1, “The Federal Reserve last week signaled a more aggressive path for future interest-rate increases than many investors were expecting, which could put more upward pressure on mortgage rates in the months ahead”(House). Increas-ing mortgage rates have, in fact, been a major factor that has caused buyers to hold off on pur-chasing new homes. “A 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 4.32% for the week ending Thurs-day, according to Freddie Mac. That is down slightly from the prior week but up nearly one per-centage point from a year ago”(House). Along with the spike in mortgage rates and housing pric-es, recent weather has contributed to the struggling market.Weekly snow storms along with freezing temperatures has caused many to stay home, rather than going out to search for houses. The author sufficiently informs the reader on the current poor housing market, while de-livering rising mortgage rates and severe