Having ticked up an upwardly revised 8.0 percent in July, the seasonally adjusted pace of new single-family home sales in the U.S. dropped 8.7 percent in August to an annual rate of 675,000 sales, which was 5.8 percent higher than at the same time last year but 4.4 percent lower than in August of 2019, prior to the pandemic having hit.
At the same time, the median sale price of the new homes sold last month ($430,300) was 1.4 percent lower than in July, 2.3 percent lower than at the same time last year and 13.4 percent below its peak of nearly $500,000 in October of last year, with inventory levels having ticked up a percent from July to August and now 34 percent higher than prior to the pandemic, despite frequent misreporting of “record low inventory levels” in the press.
