Having dropped a downwardly revised 3.7 percent in April, the seasonally adjusted pace of new single-family home sales in the U.S. rebounded 6.7 percent in May to annual pace of 689,000 sales which is 14.1 percent higher on a year-over-year basis and 6.0 percent above the long-term average for this time of the year.
At the same time, the number of new single-family homes for sale across the county inched up from 296,000 to 299,000, which is 10.3 percent higher than at the same time last year and within 3 percent of the long-term average for new home inventory levels over the past 55 years.
But in the west, having dropped 8.0 percent in April, the annual pace of new single-family home sales dropped another 8.7 percent in May to 157,000 transactions and is now running 0.6 percent above its pace at the same time last year.