After leading the rate of new home sales lower in August, the Northeast was out front of a month-over-month and year-over-year gain last month. Home prices climbed.
There were 46,000
new houses that were sold during September. That turned out to be a thousand fewer property sales than the prior month’s downwardly revised level.
But the sale of new houses exceeded the volume
reported for the same month last year, when there were a downwardly revised 35,000 transactions that were closed.
Historical data from the
the Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development, which released the latest figures Wednesday, indicate that there were 440,000 sales from Jan. 1, 2016, through Sept. 30.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, the rate of new home sales was 593,000 last month, accelerating from a downwardly revised 575,000 in August and a downwardly revised 457,000 in September 2015. The month-over-month improvement follows a decline in the prior report.
“New home sales have been trending upward all year, and this gradual increase is in line with other positive signals, including rising single-family starts and solid builder sentiment,” National Association of Home Builders Chairman Ed Brady said in a written statement.
In the Northeast, the seasonally adjusted annual rate was 32,000
in September 2016, rising from the previous month by a third — the biggest gain of any region. The stellar gain followed a month when the Northeast had the largest month-over-month decline. Compared to a year earlier, new home sales in the Northeast have soared 60 percent — also the highest gain from a year earlier for any region.
A 9 percent increase from August put the rate at 76,000 in the Midwest, while a 3 percent rise in the South left the rate there at 338,000.
The West had a 5 percent decline from August to an annual rate of 147,000.
As of Sept. 30, 2016, there were a seasonally adjusted 235,000 new U.S. houses for sale, off less than a percent from a month earlier but up 6 percent from a year earlier.
At the current pace of sales, it would take 4.8 months to clear out the existing inventory. The supply thinned from 4.9 months in August and 5.8 months in September 2015.
“Low mortgage rates, continued job growth and tight inventory levels are all factors that point to increased housing production as we move into 2017,” NAHB Chief Economist Robert Dietz stated in the trade group’s announcement.
Last month’s median sales price was $313,500, up 2 percent from a year earlier.
The average sales price was $377,700, a gain of nearly 3 percent from September 2015.
The
S&P CoreLogic Case-Shiller 20-City Home Price Index, released Tuesday, was 191.66 as of August, up 5 percent from the same month last year.
Home prices stand at 7 percent less than the peak reached in July 2006 but are 43 percent higher than the low in March 2012, according to the Case-Shiller data.
