U.S. New Home Sales Rebound From Downwardly Revised Level In November

New home sales in the U.S. rebounded strongly from a substantially downwardly revised level in the month of November, according to a report released by the Commerce Department on Thursday.

The Commerce Department said new home sales soared by 12.4 percent to an annual rate of 744,000 in November.

However, the sharp increase came from a downwardly revised rate of 662,000 in October, which was down 8.4 percent from the revised September rate of 723,000.

The downwardly revised rate in October reflected the lowest level of new home sales since the rate of 582,000 in April of 2020.

Economists had expected new home sales to jump 3.4 percent to a rate of 770,000 in November from the 745,000 originally reported for the previous month.

The rebound in new home sales came as home sales in the West skyrocketed by 53.2 percent to a rate of 242,000 and home sales in the Northeast spiked by 15.6 percent to a rate of 37,000.

New home sales in the South also shot up by 2.7 percent to a rate of 412,000, while new home sales in the Midwest plunged by 25.4 percent to a rate of 53,000.

The report also showed the median sales price of new houses sold in November was $416,900, up 2 percent from $408.700 and up 18.8 percent from $350,800 a year ago.

The estimate of new houses for sale at the end of November was 402,000, which represents 6.5 months of supply at the current sales rate.

“We expect new home sales to mostly trend sideways in 2022,” said Kathy Bostjancic, Chief US Financial Economist at Oxford Economics. “Demand should remain strong, but supply is expected to increase only gradually and the runup in prices over the last year has sidelined many prospective buyers.”

A separate report released by the National Association of Realtors on Wednesday showed U.S. existing home sales increased for the third straight month in November, reaching their highest annual rate in ten months.

NAR said existing home sales jumped 1.9 percent to an annual rate of 6.46 million in November after climbing by 0.8 percent to a rate of 6.34 million in October.

With the continued increase, existing home sales reached their highest annual rate since hitting 6.66 million in January.

Source: Read Full Article