Having dropped 12.0 percent in April, the seasonally adjusted pace of new single-family home sales in the U.S. increased 10.7 percent in May to an annualized rate of 696,000 sales. That being said, the pace of new home sales last month was down 5.9 percent on a year-over-year basis despite a marked increase in inventory.
In fact, there were 444,000 new homes on the market at the end of May, representing 34.5 percent more inventory than at the same time last year and the most new homes on the market since May of 2008, while mortgage application volumes to purchase said homes continues to drop and mortgage rates continue to rise, a trio of trends that shouldn’t have caught any plugged-in readers by surprise.
