Daily Real Estate News | August 27, 2008
New home sales in July rose 2.4 percent over the prior month to an annual pace of 515,000, the U.S. Commerce Department reported Tuesday.
At the same time, the number of unsold homes on the market fell 5.2 percent, marking the largest single-month decline since November 1963. Year over year, however, new-home sales were down 35.3 percent and the median new-home price slipped 6.3 percent to $230,700.
Nonetheless, some economists find the latest numbers reassuring.
"We're hopefully getting in the vicinity of a bottom,'' says David Resler, chief U.S. economist at Nomura Securities International Inc. in New York.
"The biggest declines, they're all behind us now," says Nigel Gault, chief domestic economist at Global Insight, a research firm.
Sales of new homes slipped in Midwestern and Southern states, according to the Commerce Department report, but rose in the Northeast and West. The median price of a new home in July was $230,700, down 6.3 percent from a year ago. Sales of new homes remained 35.3 percent below their level in July 2007.
Source: Bloomberg, Shobhana Chandra (08/26/2008)
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