The seasonally adjusted pace of new single-family home sales in the U.S. slipped less than a percent from January to February and the pace was still 5.9 percent higher than at the same time last year but 7.5 percent lower than in February of 2020, prior to the pandemic really having hit.
At the same time, the median sale price of the new homes sold last month dropped nearly 4 percent, from an upwardly revised $414,900 in January to $400,500 in February and was down 7.6 percent on a year-over-year basis and nearly 20 percent below its fourth quarter of 2022 peak, with inventory levels, which are over 40 percent higher than prior to the pandemic, having ticked up another percent to within a percent of a 16-year high, despite continued misreporting of “supply constraints” in the press, none of which should catch any plugged-in reader’s by surprise.
