A Disappointing 3rd Quarter for the Furniture Industry Housing Industry Percent Growth by Quarter
February 17,
2017 by Jane Chero in General 
This is the fourth factoid in a series of five factoids detailing the weakened 3rd quarter of 2016. The first quarter of 2016 in the furniture and bedding industry started off continuing the 5 percent plus growth over the previous year for all quarters in 2015. But as the year wore on, subsequent quarters did not perform to those levels. Quarter two fell to 3.7 percent growth and quarter three fell to 3.0 percent growth over quarter the same quarters of 2015. Year-end sales in 2015 totaled $92.5 billion. Third quarter year-to-date industry sales reached $71.5 billion, a 3.0 percent increase over the first three quarters last year.
The furniture industry, aside from demographics, is driven by economic influencers and catalysts. The previous two factoids detail two year quarterly growth of the Gross Domestic Product, Payroll Employment, and Consumer Price Index, Unemployment Rates and Consumer Confidence. The final two factoids will focus on quarterly growth of the Housing Industry and it’s tie into the Furniture Industry. Nothing impacts furniture industry growth perhaps more than home sales both existing and new.
Existing Home Sales. Home re-sales experienced healthy first and second quarters this year growing 5.0 and 4.2 percent from 2015. However, 2016 Q3 dropped 0.4 percent from 2015 Q3. At an annualized rate, third quarter existing home sales totaled 5.3 million units.
New Home Sales. Part of the third quarter decline in existing home sales this year is offset by new single-family home sales that surged 23.1 percent in the third quarter to an annualized rate of 599,000 units. After double-digit growth in 2015, 2016 year started with very slow growth in the first quarter of 1.6 percent. The second quarter rebounded, however, to 14.5 percent increase followed by the third quarter surge.
Source: *National Association of Realtors; **U.S. Census Bureau