New U.S. Home Sales Start Week on Gloomy Note

Last month’s sales numbers on new U.S. homes has experts believing that the housing market is years away from recovering.
The Commerce Department reported Monday that new-home sales fell 2.3 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 295,000 in August. In a healthy housing market, the rate would be about 700,000.
The decline equals the fourth straight month of drops and represents a new six-month low.
The positive news is that August’s rate is 6.1 percent above the 278,000 level in August 2010.
Still, experts believe that new-home sales are on pace to record their worst year since the Commerce Department began keeping records more than 50 years ago.
Another positive: The Midwest was the only region in the country to post a gain in new-home sales in August, rising 8.2 percent.
Elsewhere, new-home sales last month fell 2.4 percent in the South; 6.3 percent in the West and a whopping 13.6 percent in the Northeast, mainly due to Hurricane Irene’s arrival at the end of August.
When it comes to U.S. new-home sales price last month, those also fell. The Commerce Department reported that the median sales price of new homes sold at the end of August dropped nearly 9 percent to $209,100.
That’s the lowest price since October of 2010.
I read something from the Associated Press today that said, “Home prices have dropped more since the recession started, on a percentage basis, than during the Great Depression of the 1930s. It took 19 years for prices to fully recover after the Depression.”
Hard to end on a positive note with that, except to say that it is still quite the buyer’s market out there. Now, if only there were any buyers out there willing to buy.