While the seasonally adjusted pace of new single-family home sales in the U.S. ticked up 1.0 percent in July to an annualized rate of 708,000 sales, the current pace of sales is over 27 percent lower than at the same time last year and down 29 percent since the start of this year.
At the same time, there are now 367,000 new single-family homes for sale across the country, representing 26.1 percent more new homes on the market than there were at the same time last year and the most new home inventory in the U.S. since November of 2008, which shouldn’t catch any plugged-in reader’s by surprise.
And while the median price of the homes which sold last month ticked up 5.5 percent from June ($370,200) to $390,500 in July, which is 18.4 percent higher than at the same time last year, that’s with 49 percent of the sales having been for homes with a sale price of at least $400,000 versus only 29 percent at the same time last year (i.e., it’s the mix not “appreciation” per se).