The 5% drop in new home sales seems surprising only, perhaps, to those of us living on the west coast, where the market still seems tight. At the end of the linked article, though, we read "Bucking the national trend, sales in the West posted an 11.3 percent increase in January after a 6.3 percent gain in December." Perhaps the news of higher interest rates takes longer to reach the West? The northeastern news hub (AP, Bloomberg, Reuters) offers no explanations. Can something as simple as "warmer weather, without hurricanes" really explain it?