Dennis Norman
By: Dennis Norman
This morning the U.S. Department of Commerce released a report showing the sale of New Homes in August were at a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 429,000, a 0.7 percent increase from July, but a 3.4 percent decrease from a year ago.
The Northeast region after seeing a 32.4 percent increase in sales in July saw a 16.1 percent decrease in August but is still up 28.6 percent from a year ago. The Midwest region saw sales drop 5.8 percent in August and is down 31.9 percent from a year ago. The South region stayed on track in August selling homes at the same rate as July but is down 11.1 percent from a year ago. The West region had a 12.1 percent increase for the month and is up 30.4 percent from a year ago.
For the past two months I have commented that perhaps the best news in the housing reports is the decline in inventory of homes, which in August dropped again to 262,000 homes for a 7.3 month supply. This is an improvement of over 34 percent in the past year and is something that was desperately needed to get the market to balance out.
Prices on new homes are dropping though. The median price in August was $195,200, a decrease of 7 percent from July’s median price of $210,100. Lower priced new homes continue to dominate sales with 23 percent of the new homes sold in August in the $150,000 – $199,999 price range and over 50% of the new homes sales at prices below $200,000. Only 14 percent of the homes sold in July were $400,000 or above.
The homes sold in August have been around a while, with the median time on market being 12.9 months, up from 12.5 months in July.
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