ICSC: Retail sales rise 0.1%, capping slow June

LOW TEMPERATURES and home prices continued to slow retail sales in June, the ICSC-UBS survey found. Above, Honorine Gautier holds her daughter, Bianca Gautier, 1, while shopping for a travel bag at a Target store in Miami.  /
LOW TEMPERATURES and home prices continued to slow retail sales in June, the ICSC-UBS survey found. Above, Honorine Gautier holds her daughter, Bianca Gautier, 1, while shopping for a travel bag at a Target store in Miami. /

NEW YORK – The International Council of Shopping Centers and UBS Securities LLC today pared their forecast for June retail sales, as declining house prices and and cooler-than-usual weather dampened consumer spending, according to Bloomberg News.
Sales at U.S. retail stores open at least one year may have risen 1.5 percent to 2.0 percent last month, compared with June 2006, the ICSC and UBS said in a statement today, paring their forecast again after saying last week that the month’s sales would be “at the low end” of their original 3-percent to 5-percent prediction.
“The broad trend since February has been slower sales growth,” wrote Michael Niemira, the ICSC’s head economist. “Weekly numbers go up and down, but the trend has not altered.”
In the week ended June 30, sales rose 0.1 percent over those the previous week, the report said, after falling 0.7 percent in the week ended June 23 and 0.1 percent the week before that. Compared with the same week of 2006, sales rose 2.5 percent, rebounding from the 1.7-percent year-over-year gain the week ended June 23, which was the smallest increase in seven weeks.
Niemira predicted that chain-store sales will rise as the housing market stabilizes.
In April, home prices in 20 U.S. cities fell the most in six years, hurt by a growing backlog of unsold homes, Bloomberg said. And according to Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, housing accounts for about 23 percent of the nation’s economy.
The International Council of Shopping Centers, a New York-based trade group, and investment bank UBS track same-store sales at about 60 chains that represent about 10 percent of U.S. retail sales. Additional information is available at www.icsc.org.

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