While the seasonally adjusted pace of new single-family home sales in the U.S. ticked up a little over 4 percent in April to an annualized rate of 683,000 homes, a pace which was 10 percent higher than at the same time last year, the pace was 15 percent lower than at the end of 2019, prior to the pandemic having hit, and the median sale price last month ($420,800) was around 8 percent lower on both a month-over-month and year-over-year basis, with an average sale price ($501,000) that was down nearly 11 percent, year-over-year.

At the same time, the net number of new homes on the market inched up 0.2 percent on both a month-over-month and year-over-year basis to 433,000 homes, representing 7.6 months of inventory, which still represents a “buyer’s market” for those who actually like that stat.

One thought on “New Home Sales Tick Up, Sale Prices Drop”
  1. In case you missed it from Gallup a little earlier this month, Views of U.S. Housing Market Reach New Depths:

    Twenty-one percent of U.S. adults believe it is a good time to buy a house, down nine percentage points from the prior low recorded last year. The 2022 and 2023 readings are the only times that less than half of Americans have perceived the housing market as being good for buyers in Gallup’s trend since 1978. The latest results are from Gallup’s annual Economy and Personal Finance poll, conducted April 3-25. Seventy-eight percent currently say it is a bad time to buy a house.

    …Opinions of the housing market are bleak and generally similar among all major subgroups, including by region, urbanicity, homeownership status, income, education and party identification. Subgroups in these categories range from 18% to 24% thinking it is a good time to buy a house.

    Emphasis mine.

    I think this is one of the few publically-available metrics where it doesn’t pay to be a contrarian. They further found that Americans still regard real estate as the best long-term investment over other assets.

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