With the Northeast leading the way, sales of new houses turned lower last month. The new home inventory is at the highest level in nearly seven years.
The sale of new single-family homes amounted to 51,000
units during all of May, diminishing from the downwardly revised 57,000 the prior month.
But
the number of new houses sold picked up compared to the same month last year, when there were a downwardly adjusted 47,000 homes sold.
The statistics were jointly reported Thursday by the Census Bureau and the Department of Housing and Urban Development.
On a seasonally adjusted basis, new home sales came in at an annual rate of 551,000, slowing from 586,000 in April.
Still, the pace picked up from May 2015, when the annual rate was 507,000.
Helping to fuel the month-over-month decline was the Northeast, where the annual rate plunged by a third to 34,000. A 16 percent drop from April in the West put the rate there at 124,000, while a 1 percent dip in the South left the rate at 323,000.
The Midwest was the only region to experience an increase from one month previous in the seasonally adjusted annual rate: 13 percent
to 70,000.
May 2016’s activity left a seasonally adjusted 244,000 U.S. homes for sale at the end of last month — the largest inventory of new homes since it stood at 252,000 in September 2009 based on historical data from the bureau and HUD.
The latest inventory worked out to a 5.3-month supply based on the current pace of sales.
Without any seasonal adjustments, the median sales price on U.S. homes sold last month was $290,400, while the average price was $358,900. Both figures were lower than in April and higher than a year earlier.
