A more than doubling of new home sales in the Northeast helped the nation as a whole to swing from a decline to an increase last month.
For the month of October,
the sale of new houses worked out to an annual U.S. rate of 495,000. The rate reflects adjustments for seasonality.
Activity improved from the downwardly revised
rate of 447,000 the prior month — when a 13 percent decline was recorded from August.
The numbers were reported Wednesday by
the Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
In the same month last year, the pace of new home sales was a seasonally adjusted 472,000.
Compared to September 2015, new home sales in the Northeast skyrocketed 135 percent to an annual rate of 40,000. Sales in the region had plunged a revised 47 percent in the last report.
A nine percent month-over-month increase in the South put the annual rate at 281,000 there.
The Midwest saw a five percent increase to an annual rate of 60,000.
Only the West had a decline — one percent to an annual rate of 114,000.
Without making any seasonal adjustments, last month’s new U.S. home sales totaled 41,000, up from 34,000 units in September.
There were a seasonally adjusted 226,000 new U.S. homes for sale as of Oct. 31, 2015.
The new-home
inventory inched up from 223,000 units one month earlier and climbed from 208,000 units a year earlier.
At the current rate of sales, last month’s seasonally adjusted inventory represented a 5.5 month supply — falling from 6.0 months in September but up from 5.3 months in October 2014.
October 2015’s median sales prices was $281,500 without any seasonal adjustments, while the average price was $366,000.
A separate report from the Federal Housing Finance Agency indicated that home prices during the third quarter were 1.3 percent higher than three months earlier on a seasonally adjusted basis.
“This is the 17th consecutive quarterly price increase in the purchase-only, seasonally adjusted index,” the regulator said.
FHFA reported a 5.7 percent year-over-year improvement.
