As new home sales picked up last month, the inventory of new houses for sale increased to the highest level in more than seven years.
The number of
privately owned new single-family residential properties that were sold during February 2017 came to 49,000 units.
Volume jumped from 41,000 the prior month to the highest volume since July 2016, when there were downwardly revised 54,000 sales.
In the same month last year, new home sales totaled an upwardly revised 45,000.
The metrics were provided jointly Thursday by the Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
Year-to-date new home sales amounted to
90,000 units.
When adjustments for seasonal factors are applied, the annual rate of new home sales was 592,000, climbing from an upwardly revised 558,000 a month earlier and leaping from an upwardly revised 525,000 a year earlier.
“February’s increase in new home sales is consistent with builders’ growing confidence in the housing market,” National Association of Home Builders Chairman Granger MacDonald said in a written statement. “Builders are encouraged by heightened consumer activity and by the expectation that regulatory costs will decline in the year ahead.”
The month-over-month improvement was led by the Midwest, where new home sales surged
31 percent to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of 89,000. The West climbed 8 percent to a rate of 157,000, while the South increased 4 percent to 313,000.
The Northeast, however, saw a 21 percent decline to a seasonally adjusted annual rate of just 33,000.
At the end of last month, there were a seasonally adjusted 266,000 new U.S.
homes for sale — the largest inventory since July 2009, when there were 270,000 new homes for sale.
February 2017’s inventory represented a seasonally adjusted 5.4-month supply.
Last month’s median sales price was $296,200, while the average sales price was $390,400.
