While the seasonally adjusted pace of new single-family home sales in the U.S. increased 11.9 percent from November to December, the annualized rate of 811,000 transactions was down 14.0 percent on a year-over-year basis. And as we noted last week, mortgage application activity to purchase a new home was down 7.1 percent on a year-over-year basis at the end of 2021 as well.
At the same time, the number of new homes on the market across the country, net of new sales, ticked up another 1.5 percent to 403,000 homes, representing 34.8 percent more new homes on the market than at the end of 2020 and the most new home inventory since August of 2008, a figure that shouldn’t catch any plugged-in readers by surprise.
And while the median new home sale price ($377,700) was 3.4 percent higher than at the end of 2020, it was 9.2 percent lower than in November ($416,100) and 10.4 percent below its October peak ($421,500) with 46 percent of the sales having been for homes with a sale price of at least $400,000 last month versus 37 percent of the sales at the end of 2020.