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Fishkind Conversations: Digging For Data Gold In Home Sales

Image Credit: Mark Moz via flickr and Creative Commons
Image Credit: Mark Moz via flickr and Creative Commons

Believe it or not, if you want to keep on top of economic trends, you’ll find one of the most reliable indicators in what is perhaps an unexpected place.

Economic analyst Hank Fishkind says data for the sales of existing homes are one of the most important and reliable indicators for the economy.

They’re reliable because they’re not subject to large revisions that often come later with other reports…jobs numbers, for instance.

And they’re particularly important for Florida, because when sales of existing homes are high this means more people have sold their homes and can move to Florida. Since the Sunshine State’s economic well-being depends fairly heavily on population growth, that’s a big deal.

Fishkind says the headlines from the latest March report are that existing home sales fell in the U.S., maintaining the slight downward trend over the past year, and are down by 5.4% from March 2018. Florida was a bit stronger with single-family home sales flat over the last year, while sales of condominiums and townhomes were down 6%.

But he tells 90.7’s Nicole Darden Creston that those numbers aren’t quite as dismal as they seem, and there are more surprises hidden in the existing home sales data for March.

Click the Play Audio button to hear their conversation.

Nicole came to Central Florida to attend Rollins College and started working for Orlando’s ABC News Radio affiliate shortly after graduation. She joined WMFE in 2010. As a field reporter, news anchor and radio show host in the City Beautiful, she has covered everything from local arts to national elections, from extraordinary hurricanes to historic space flights, from the people and procedures of Florida’s justice system to the changing face of the state’s economy.