Having ticked up an upwardly revised 3.6 percent in February, the seasonally adjusted pace of new single-family home sales in the U.S. ticked up another 4.0 percent in March to annual pace of 694,000 sales, which is 8.8 percent higher on a year-over-year basis and 6.8 percent above average for this time of the year.
At the same time, the number of new single-family homes for sale across the county held at 301,000, which is the most available inventory since the first quarter of 2009 and 13.2 percent higher than at the same time last year.
And having dropped in February, the annual pace of new single-family home sales in the west jumped 28.3 percent in March to 222,000 transactions, which is 24.7 percent higher versus the same time last year.
People do not live “Out West” nor “Back East”. They live where they live, not relative to anything else. This is after all supposed to be an all things to all people journal; not centered or favoring one area over another. Better to refer to “in the West”. In the same way we shouldn’t say “Far East”, but “East Asia” or similar.
this comment should win some sort of award…
I get what you are saying though the writer is obviously writing from a perspective centered in the USA.
In my early years of living in the Bay Area it was jarring when a Californian referred to my former home in the “midwest” as “back east”.
Related to this a fun thing is to ask a Silicon Valley native (if you can find one ! 🙂 ) to point east. Invariably they will be 90 degrees off and point north instead due to I-280 and El Camino running “north/south”.
This native Californian grew up to understand that everything east of the Rockies to be “Back East.” And San Francisco was “The City.” Why do these terms elicit so much passion from people who move here from Back East?