Having jumped a downwardly revised 8.6 percent in September, the seasonally adjusted pace of new single-family home sales in the U.S. dropped 5.6 percent in October to an annual rate of 679,000 sales, which was 17.7 percent higher than at the same time last year but 3.8 percent below its pace in October of 2019, prior to the pandemic having hit.
At the same time, the median sale price of the new homes sold last month ($409,300) dropped another 3 percent and was down nearly 18 percent on a year-over-year basis, and below last year’s peak of nearly $500,000, with inventory levels having ticked up another 1.4 percent from September to October and nearly 37 percent more new homes on the market than prior to the pandemic, despite continued misreporting of “record low inventory levels” and “supply constraints,” which typically aren’t accompanied by lower prices, in the press.
